


portrait of two boys in free fall, artist unknown

by saintsrow2



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: AU, Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Angst with a Happy Ending, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Losers Club (IT) Friendship, M/M, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Repression, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Teenage Losers Club (IT), The Losers Club (IT) All Appear, The Losers Club (IT) Stay in Derry, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-01-24 13:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 135,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21338995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintsrow2/pseuds/saintsrow2
Summary: 1993: When Richie was seventeen he wrote the boy he loved a love letter. The letter said “I would do anything for you”, and he wrote it by throwing a brick through the windshield of Henry Bowers' car.2014: When Richie was thirty-eight he received an email from the boy he had loved. The email said “I miss you”, and it was written by sending him a link to the Derry High School 2014 reunion Facebook page, with a signature that just saidEds.In 1993, the Losers Club are coming up to the end of high school and Richie Tozier is the only one who doesn't know what he's going to do next. All he has is a couple of hundred dollars and a best friend he doesn't want to leave behind. They've just had their first kiss, and he doesn't want it to be their last.In 2014, Richie Tozier hasn't been back to Derry since he was a teenager. But for the first time, he thinks he might have to go back.An AU with no Pennywise exploring Richie's teenage years in Derry, his relationship with Eddie, and the plan of two boys to run away from the place that threatens to crush them.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 417
Kudos: 740





	1. 1993: there's nothing to keep you/from falling in love

**Author's Note:**

> my new fic! the description says it all. there's no Pennywise, no magic, just a group of kids in shitty semi-rural Maine trying to work out their lives and their feelings. 
> 
> underage drinking is a pretty prominent plot point in this so if that's not something you're comfortable reading, be warned. there's also some homophobia, including homophobic slurs, but i wouldn't say it goes any further than the first movie in any aspects. 
> 
> be sure to check out my other fic [not quite young](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21064337/chapters/50109782)!

When Richie was seventeen he wrote the boy he loved a love letter. The letter said “I would do anything for you”, and he wrote it by throwing a brick through the windshield of Henry Bowers' car. 

Eddie, pale and with a steady trickle of blood running from his nose, watched in open-mouthed horror as Henry turned just in time to see the glass window explode inwards and cover the entire interior of his shitty Trans Am in shining pieces. 

“Yeah bitch!” Richie screamed. “How’d you like that?!”

Henry Bowers let out a howl of rage so loud that it made the bones inside Richie's ears shake, dropping Eddie into the dirt in a crumpled pile. Richie got the briefest glimpse of Eddie's terrified face, face streaked with tears and smeared with dirt and blood, before Henry charged into him with the force of an oncoming train and suddenly there was no ground under Richie's feet anymore. The wall of flesh hit Richie like he was a bug on the windshield he had just defenestrated and the tarmac rose up to meet him with an impact that rattled all the bones in his body. His head rebounded off the ground and there was an explosion of stars in front of his eyes even before Bowers drove a knee into his stomach and knocked out what little wind was left inside him. 

“You fucking four-eyed little freak!” Bowers roared, only inches away from Richie's face and splattering him with spittle. “You're fucking dead for this, you got it? You and your little faggot friends!”

Bowers hit Richie then, a punch that sent his glasses flying, skittering across the concrete, and made an orchestral cacophony explode inside his head. The world swirled around him sickeningly, the grey sky and the grey sidewalk and the grey houses swirling into one vision. He thrashed under Henry’s weight, trying to throw the boy off him and failing; Richie was growing up to be taller than anyone would have guessed, taller than Bowers significantly, but he had the proportions of a newborn foal and the grace and strength to match.

“You red-neck fuck!” Richie tried to hit Bowers and missed horribly, his depth perception warped completely by the absence of his glasses. “I hope you fucking choke on your dad's dick!”

In the blurry haze that was the rest of the world, Richie could only vaguely make out the streak of pink and black that was Eddie Kaspbrak; Eddie Kaspbrak, who had managed to step up out of the mud but not managed to make it across the road where his best friend was getting the tar beaten out of him. It was too unclear for Richie to know what he was doing, but he had a good bet. Eddie would be scared out of his fucking mind, and he would be standing there paralysed by indecision until the last possible second.

Another punch was coming, threatening to knock all the teeth out of Richie’s skull, but it never made contact because there was the scream of a car horn and Henry let go of Richie, jumping to his feet and stumbling backwards. Richie scrambled upright, snatching his glasses off the ground and jamming them back on his face. He swayed unsteadily on his feet, squinting at the driver of the large blue pick-up truck that was perfectly positioned to run them both over.

Mike glared out at them all. Eddie was already sprinting over to him, yanking the passenger side door and throwing himself inside. Richie followed suit, swerving to avoid Bowers’ grasp when the bully lunged at him half-heartedly, only stopping when Mike revved the engine. Eddie kicked the door so it swung open and Richie jumped in, the three of them cramming themselves into the two-person bench in the truck cab.

Bowers smacked a fist against the hood of Mike’s truck, the sound reverberating.

“I’m going to fucking get you for this,” he said. “Don’t think I’m going to forget.”

“Get out of the road before I run you over,” Mike said. His voice sounded less certain than his engine, but he only needed the size of his truck to sell it. 

Bowers might have been vicious to the point of ferality but he wasn’t suicidal, and he gave way when Mike’s truck lurched forward an inch, jumping out of its path. As Mike picked up speed down the street and began racing away he threw a rock after them, but it fell short of hitting the truck and bounced across the road. Richie watched Bowers fading away through the back window, flipping him off with both hands before Eddie grabbed him and pulled him back around, so he’d no longer be elbowing everyone in the face.

The size of Mike’s truck was an ongoing point of conflict. It was a pretty good sized vehicle, and could just about fit three people in the cab, but was really only intended for two. This was a particular problem because while Bill and Stan had already obtained their licenses and Ben and Richie were well on their way, Mike was the only one who actually owned his own vehicle. He had saved up for months to buy the truck second-hand from his uncle and while it was a beast that ran perfectly and was great for summers, when up to five of them could pile into the back and sit out in the open sun, it was difficult for transportation the rest of the year. Like right then, with Eddie squeezed into the narrow space between his two friends and trying to hold his own without getting flattened.

“What the hell did you do?” Mike said. “He looked like he was about to explode.”

“Richie threw a brick through his fucking window!” Eddie said, pinching at his nose with a fistful of tissues to try and mop up the blood flow. It made his voice nasal in a way Richie found incredibly funny. 

Mike let out a bark of laughter. “He’s going to kill you.”

“He was always going to kill me anyway,” Richie said. “At least he didn’t knock all of Eddie’s teeth out.”

Eddie looked up at Richie through his lashes, slightly averting his gaze. He looked a little ashamed. Richie could have brought up why Bowers had started a fight in the first place, before the brick had been thrown, but he chose not to. Not in front of Mike, at least. Some things couldn’t be shared with everyone. The feeling of Eddie’s hand in his had been replaced by a friction burn from the tarmac, but he could hold onto the memory of it. 

“I’m glad I was there to help you guys out,” Mike said.

“Yeah, me fuckin’ too, man.” Richie leaned over to bump his fist against Mike’s, Eddie muttering about getting an arm in his face. 

Winter was fast coming to Derry and it was already starting to get dark. Richie had the miserable feeling that they’d soon be back to walking home in the pitch black and freezing cold at 7 PM, and trudging through snow before much longer. He promised to himself he’d get a car before then; it was his eighteenth birthday come November and while he doubted his parents would pay for the whole thing, he could probably beg enough money off them to make a substantial contribution to his car fund. His car fund was not impressive. He’d been stacking shelves at the hardware store on weekends, but found the money didn’t stretch very far, not when he kept diving into it for cigarette and beer money almost every week. The other option was using his college fund, but his parents were still holding out hope _ that _ was going to happen. Richie was less enthusiastic.

Mike’s truck trundled on under the darkening skies, heading down the series of streets that would eventually turn them up at Eddie’s house. Eddie sank down in the seat as he watched the block he lived on steadily approach them, the shadow of his house somehow looming far larger than the small building should have. The unwillingness to get out of the truck was radiating off him but when Mike pulled up outside his house he still levered himself up off the seat.

“Thanks for everything, Mike,” Eddie said.

“Don’t worry about it. What are friends for, right?” Mike said.

Eddie shot him a deeply thankful look over his shoulder and then turned back to face Richie, switching from gratitude to the heights of exasperation faster than if someone had ripped out the power supply.

“Get out of my way,” he said.

“You knew you’d be getting out sooner, why didn’t you sit on the edge,” Richie said.

“Oh, my God, you are just being an asshole for the sake of it, get out of my _ way _ , _ move _.”

“Get your fucking ass out of my face.” 

They grappled ineffectually as Eddie clambered over Richie, bitching the entire time about the emotional burden of having to touch him. He made it out, though, glaring as he slid out of the truck and onto the sidewalk. After a moment, Richie followed him out. Eddie’s irritated look faded into something a little more concerned when Richie drew up close to him.

“Wait,” Richie said. He snatched the tissues that Eddie had been using to stem the flow of blood and then spat on it, using it to wipe away the dried blood from his nose. Eddie was briefly horrified as Richie started attacking him with the tissue but quickly accepted his fate, and even looked grateful when Richie released him, face washed of incriminating evidence.

“Thanks, Mom would have kicked _ my _ ass if she’d seen,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, tell Mrs K that my heart is out here aching without her.”

Eddie sighed with visceral disgust. “You can’t ever be fucking normal, can you?”

Richie shrugged at him, spinning on his heel to go jump back into Mike’s truck. Eddie just shook his head, and Richie could picture the way he would roll his eyes, the face he would make. He disappeared inside his house pretty quickly, the door quietly closing behind him and forming an immediate, impassable barrier.

Mrs Kaspbrak did not like Richie. She didn’t like any of Eddie’s friends, but she _ really _ didn’t like Richie. The tolerance for his rudeness as a child had grown thinner and thinner until she had fallen, almost predictably, into open loathing. Richie knew she told Eddie not to hang out with him; that their friendship would undoubtedly lead to ruin, and he was going to drag them all down a bad path. It gave Richie a smug sense of satisfaction that she couldn’t stop Eddie. 

He hopped into the truck and slammed the door shut. Mike gunned the engine, taking them away from Eddie’s and back to Richie’s, which was a ten minute drive and a twenty minute walk, and which Richie could have walked with his eyes closed. Mike turned on the radio, which immediately began playing something awful by U2 that made them both groan. He slapped the radio off again.

The journey wasn’t long and Richie felt like he couldn’t clear his head enough to really have anything to say. His head was still ringing, and he was a little glad for the silence that Mike offered him. The truck grumbled loudly as they rolled down the quiet streets. The suburbs in Derry were always quiet, winding around each other like the coiled links of a chain. If Richie had to describe Derry in a word, he very well might have picked _ prison _.

Mike pulled up outside Richie's house, where the sound of the TV was audible through the window, the high peals of tinned studio laughter rolling out into the street. Richie looked at his house and sighed dramatically. 

"Another day in paradise," he said.

"Don't be such a drama queen," Mike said. "I gotta go back home and feed the sheep. You don't hear me complaining."

"Yes I do, all the time. Right now," Richie said. "Thanks for saving our hides back there."

"Course, man. Next time just try to pick a fight with someone you can actually take on. Georgie, maybe."

"Very funny, Hanlon. Next time Bowers is wailing on you I'll just cruise right on by, then you'll be talking out the other side of your face."

"I don't think Bowers would be very scared of your tricycle anyway, but thanks for offering."

The two of them did their secret handshake, which they had started doing a year ago but were not particularly good at remembering, which meant that every time they performed it turned into increasingly elaborate improv. It did make them feel like they had a special bond though, which Richie figured meant it was doing its job, improvised or not. He jumped out of Mike's truck and let himself into the house.

Both his parents were home that Sunday, his mom watching a rerun of _ Full House _while his dad stumbled around the garden looking unconvinced by his own attempt at having a hobby. Richie's parents were not very good at having free time, and he thought that the weekend stressed them out more than the burdens of the work day. He did not understand them.

He'd been in the house for approximately ten seconds, just long enough to check the cupboard to see if they had any peanut butter left when the phone started ringing. It was on the wall to the left of the fridge so Richie grabbed it first, jamming it between his shoulder and ear as he rummaged in the cookie jar to try and grab the last Oreo.

"Hello?" He said.

"Hey, Richie," Eddie said.

"What the fuck man, I just saw you ten minutes ago. You miss me this much already?"

"Shut up. Look, I wanted to say sorry."

"Sorry for what? For being such a joyless little dweeb? I'm used to that."

"Richie!" His mother called scoldingly from the lounge. "Be nice!"

"No, mouthbreather. Sorry for not helping when Bowers was pounding the living fuck out of you." 

"Oh. It's fine. I didn't expect you to do anything anyways."

Eddie sighed, but it sounded sad rather than annoyed and caught Richie off-guard. Richie shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

"Yeah, I know. But you broke his window even though you knew he'd fucking kill you for it, so I…" Eddie's voice trailed off and in the background, his mother's rang out, calling after her little _ Eddy Bear _ and he growled under his breath. "I gotta go."

"See you around, Eddie Spaghetti."

"Fuck off, Trashmouth."

"Hey, tell your mom I-"

Eddie hung up before Richie could finish the sentence. Richie shoved the cookie jar back on top of the fridge, his appetite vanishing. He suddenly felt very strange, his heart fluttering in his chest as if he'd run a marathon. He thought about Eddie at home, worrying about him, and was overcome with a powerful need to lie down.

He traipsed back out of the kitchen just as his father was coming from the yard and was darting for the stairs when his mom called out to him.

"You and little Eddie Kaspbrak aren't fighting again, are you?" She said.

"No, Mom," Richie found it increasingly hard not to talk to his parents exclusively in a language of exaggerated sighs. They weren't the worst folks around, he knew that, but the labour of having to explain everything he did to them was unbearable when they seemed so thoroughly unable to understand or appreciate his approach to life. "He's my best friend."

"It's just boys being boys, Maggie," his dad said lightly. His dad had the exact same owlish glasses Richie did, and seemed to be unable to decide if he thought his son's tearaway behaviour was inappropriate or admirable. 

"Yeah, well, you don't have to deal with Sonia Kaspbrak calling you at 7 AM to tell you that she heard _ Richard _ calling her precious little Eddie-kins 'the hottest Derry tourist attraction around for all crabs and other STI viruses', I mean, what even _ is _ that? Why are you so mean to him? Richard?"

"Don't know if I could stand Sonia Kaspbrak calling me at all," Richie's dad said conspiratorially to Richie, as if this was somehow a scandalous statement. Richie stared at him balefully.

"It's just how we joke around, Mom. He calls me stuff too. He said that I smell like I'd spent my entire life growing up in a retirement home toilet bowl."

"Well, I think that's_ disgusting _. Why can't you just be nice? We should have had girls, Wentworth. Girls don't say things like this. They at least have the dignity to just call each other bitches behind their backs."

“I don’t know, that Beverly Marsh gives it as good as she gets.”

“She doesn’t count, look at the way she was raised. There was never any hope for the poor girl, father like that.”

"I call Eddie a bitch all the time," Richie said, unhelpfully.

His mother eyed him contemptuously and Richie escaped up the stairs as his parents continued to bemoan their lot in life. Classically for them, neither of them had noticed the huge swelling bruise on his cheek. He made sure to slam his door with as much drama as possible when he got inside, rattling the bookshelves, before faceplanting on the bed. He lay motionless for a few moments before rolling over onto his back to stare at the wall of photographs.

Stan had been gifted a large and very expensive camera a year or so prior. While it had been intended for his bird watching it got just as much use documenting the Losers Club's every waking moment. Stan would take the camera out almost every day and then get the reels of film developed at the photography store where he'd gotten a weekend job, developing huge stacks of pictures by himself when his boss wasn't looking and costing the business a small fortune in paper. Of these enormous piles of pictures he would sort through and use his photographer's eye to select only the best. He had something in his head about developing a portfolio, but it was unclear what for or how passionate he really was about this.

The others supported him regardless, and Richie's form of support was to snatch as many of the reject photos as he could, so he could line his wall with them. Over a year into Stan's experiment as a documentarian, the wall above Richie's bed was coated in enough glossy rectangles that he could have gotten away with stripping off the wallpaper underneath entirely. 

All of the photographs were bad. That was the point of them. A picture of Mike mid-yawn, his face crumpled into a bizarrely dopey expression. Beverly so blurry and out of focus she looked more like an explosion of flame than a girl. Bill's left ear and a glimpse of Ben, who was talking and looking off camera. Pride of place, right over the pillow, was a picture of Richie and Eddie jumping into the quarry, taken from below. Stan had been experimenting with shutter speed, whatever that was, and the resulting photograph was an absolutely crystal clear picture of the rock walls of the quarry with Richie and Eddie's falling forms as strange ghosts, many versions of them blurring into twin streams of light, overlapping and entangled as they plummeted into the water. Stan thought it looked stupid, but Richie thought it was beautiful and put it next to his other favourite, a picture of Eddie grimacing after he drank beer for the first time.

The pictures didn't inspire much in Richie. It was, he thought, a rough time to be alive. In a year they would be graduating, and he was waiting for that with the blind, devoted eagerness that only a teenager could, while also being terrified of it. Because Richie Tozier had _ no plans _. 

Eddie, Bill and Mike had all been discussing the University of Maine, which was within commuting distance of Derry, with some relative certainty they'd end up going. Beverly was, like Richie, dedicated to getting out as fast as possible but, unlike Richie, knew what she wanted to do. She'd interned at the small clothes designer her aunt worked for in Portland over the summer and had returned with a passion so fierce and a desire to go to a design school in New York so intense that wild horses wouldn't stop her. Ben had set his sights on an architecture course in California. Stan looked pretty set on getting into somewhere Ivy League. 

Richie just wanted to leave. As soon as he had that car, he'd be gone, and there'd be no looking back. He looked at the photo of him and Eddie's ghosts in free fall and closed his eyes, remembering the water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Where'd All the Time Go by Dr Dog


	2. 1993: so tonight, tonight, the boys are gonna go/for more, more, more

Halloween was just around the corner. The possibilities it offered were vast and exciting, and the most exciting part of all was that they had collectively been invited to Sarah Hersch’s Halloween party. This invitation was on account of the fact that she'd been ‘going steady’ with Stan for three weeks, something Stan took monumentally seriously. Richie just hoped the two of them didn’t break up before the party, because Sarah’s older brother was in town and definitely, for sure, would buy alcohol. There was little as motivating in Richie’s life as the possibility of free alcohol.

“You guys just better not make me look like a loser, that’s all I’m saying,” Richie said. “Because I am 100% going to get laid, but _ only _ if you don’t all fuck it up for me.”

“You’ve never been laid, and you’re never going to get laid, because you have a face like a dog and you smell worse than one that’s been dead for a week,” Eddie said, in a classic case of a teenager trying too hard.

“That’s not funny. That’s actually very hurtful, Eddie. I have a right mind to tell your mother the terrible things you just said about me,” Richie said. 

“If you ever try to go near my mother she’s going to call the cops.”

Richie attempted and failed to blow a smoke ring, Eddie watching with a look of intense disdain. The seven of them were idly hanging around in Bill’s backyard, occupying the old swingset with the apathy of a flock of crows, taking up space but not really using it for its intended purpose except perhaps by wonderful accident. The twin swings were primarily being used as seating by Beverly and Eddie, who had elevated themselves above the rest of them. 

Occasionally Georgie would emerge from the house, all of nine years old and desperate to impress the older kids. Every time Richie and Bev would dutifully hide their cigarettes behind their backs, because Bill didn’t want his little brother to get a bad impression of him or something, which Richie was unable to decide if he found cute or cloying. For the most part though, Bill’s family left them alone. Mr and Mrs Denbrough were the most aggressively nice and normal people that Richie had ever seen, though they seemed often bewildered by their son’s overactive imagination. Richie generally forced himself to be nice to them. They didn’t get his humour and he didn’t get a lot of joy out of winding them up; the pleasantness they exuded was faintly intimidating. They didn’t intentionally make Richie unwelcome, but he felt out of place when they were around, like an ugly picture in an art gallery.

Bill’s house was still a decent place to hang out in the winter. The clubhouse in the Barrens was insufferable too late into the year; they had discovered early on that it was nearly impossible to stop melted snow from leaking through the trap door entrance, and there was no way of keeping it warm. It spent the winter mostly filled with half frozen slushy ice, so the Losers were forced to evacuate for more suitable quarters. Being teenagers, this generally meant their parents’ houses, in times when they didn’t want to drive out to the new mall outside of Bedford, the next town over, and they had a pretty strict list of what worked. Mike’s was fine, but a long way out of town, and his grandfather might make them help with chores. Ben’s was good but cramped, though his mom was nice. Stan’s was ok, but his parents were always a little too close to do any talking about anything serious. Richie’s, Eddie’s, and Beverly’s were no-go zones. 

It was obvious why they didn’t hang around Eddie or Beverly’s places. Bev was close-lipped about things, but she was spending more and more weeks out of the year in Portland, and Richie could barely figure out why she came back at all, except out of some sense of responsibility to finish things here properly. Eddie’s mom didn’t let them in the house anymore. No one really asked why Richie’s house had steadily drifted further onto the uninhabitable zone list, just accepted that he didn’t want people in there. It was good no one asked, because he didn’t want to answer.

“If you guys are weird at the party, Sarah’s going to dump me,” Stan said. “I really like her, guys. Do not do the stuff you did at Bill’s birthday party.”

“Oh, that’s _ so _ unfair!” Richie said.

“That was not our fault. We all agreed that was not our fault,” Eddie said. 

“The record shows!” Beverly said, in a gently mocking voice, her and Ben giggling to themselves.

“I don’t care whose fault it was! Just don’t freak out my girlfriend,” Stan said. 

“You’re so whipped, Stanley,” Richie said. 

“I thought we agreed we weren’t g-g-going to talk about that anymore,” Bill said, sternly.

“Stan’s fault,” Richie and Eddie said simultaneously. Stan sighed, clearly feeling persecuted.

“Look,” Mike said. “Do we have a plan for what we’re doing?”

“Not everything needs a plan, Mike,” Richie said. “We’re going to get smashed and then I am going _ to _-”

“Shut _ up _ Richie. Mike’s right,” Eddie said. “If I’m not back by eleven, my mom will flip. Is anyone going to be able to get me home?” 

“I can. I’m _ not _ going to get smashed,” Mike said. 

Eddie sighed with relief. Richie rolled his eyes. 

“Will I be able to crash with anyone?” Beverly said. “My dad thinks I’m going to a sleepover.”

“You can come to mine,” Ben offered. “You know my mom loves you.”

“Thanks, Ben.” Beverly smiled at him and the little glance between them was almost enough for Richie to want to puke. Bill pointedly did not look at either of them. God, the three of them just about drove Richie batshit. 

“What are you doing R-R-Richie? I’m borrowing my mom’s car, I c-could give you a ride,” Bill said.

“I’ll just see where the wind takes me,” Richie said, flippantly. 

“Suit yourself.”

“The important part is what we’re all _ wearing _, anyway,” Richie said. “No lame shit. Sexy cats all round.”

“I’m being Chucky,” Beverly said. 

“Sexy cat Chucky?”

“No, idiot. What would that even look like?”

“Like Chucky if he was a sexy cat.”

Beverly laughed despite herself. 

“I am too old to be playing dress-up,” Eddie said.

“God, you _ are _ a loser.” Richie flicked the butt of his cigarette away but Bill gave him a death stare until he went and picked it up and deposited it over the side of the garden fence, where Georgie was not at risk of finding it.

“The whole point is that my mom doesn’t know I’m going to a party. What good is it gonna be if I go out in full cat makeup? No mom, I’m totally just chilling at Ben’s place, won’t be back too late! Also we’re doing an impromptu performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s _ Cats _.”

“I cannot believe you even know what that is. You love musical theatre, Eds?” Richie said.

“You know my mom does. I know you know, because when you found out, you wouldn’t stop making pussy jokes for like all of ninth grade.”

“Whatever. Just bring your sweet ass on Saturday, I got an idea.”

“Whatever it is? No. Already no.”

“I’m gonna be a cowboy,” Mike told Bill, conversationally. 

* * *

Eddie looked at himself in the mirror of Sarah Hersch’s bathroom and frowned deeply. _ He’s probably going to get really deep lines on his forehead when we’re older _, Richie thought. He thought a lot about what he and Eddie would look like when they were grown up; no particular reason, just that he wondered about who they might be, when they were able to be themselves without Derry and their parents forcing them into molds. 

“This is stupid,” Eddie said. 

Outside the bathroom,_ Insane in the Brain _by Cypress Hill was blasting loud enough to vibrate the door in its frame. It was making Richie feel a little insane, too. He’d chugged one cup of beer the second he’d walked into the door of Sarah’s house, then bundled Eddie into the bathroom with the supplies he’d brought.

“It’s great,” Richie said, applying fake blood to them both liberally. 

Most of what he had he’d scavenged from stores; Richie was a creative person, but verbally, not in the arts. He didn’t have Ben or Beverly’s easy eye for design or really understand what Stan was talking about when he said ‘composition’. In any case, he wasn’t going to be hand-stitching custom Halloween costumes. What he _ did _ have were prop scars, hospital gowns, and about three gallons of fake blood. Eddie watched with enormous skepticism as Richie laid tracks of stitches down opposite sides of their heads.

“Why does there need to be so much blood?” Eddie said. “If we’re supposed to be conjoined twins, shouldn’t we just be stuck together?”

“No, because we got split in half. Are you not paying attention?”

“But why all the blood?”

“The operation went bad. Come on. We should ask Beverly if she has any make-up, I bet we can make our faces look all fucked up.”

“When does she ever have _ make-up _? And we already look fucked up. How the hell am I going to get all this gunk off me later? This blood must be filled with chemicals. It’s probably going to give us both cancer.”

The bathroom door was yanked open and Sarah stood staring at them, her hands on her hips. Her curly hair was pinned up so she could do a mostly passable impression of Olivia Newton-John in _ Grease _ , which to Richie indicated that Stan was somewhere in the crowd being John Travolta in _ Grease _, which was a proposition he found so monumentally funny it had to be documented. He hoped Stan had brought his camera, because its powers were about to be used for great evil.

“Are you wrecking my bathroom?” She asked.

“No,” Richie said. “Nice pants.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Get out of the bathroom. If you got gunk on my mom’s good hand towels she’s going freak.”

“They’re towels, they’re meant to clean up shit,” Richie said, before Eddie grabbed him by the front of the hospital gown and dragged him out of the room. 

The house was pretty crowded. The Losers Club was not popular, but Sarah did alright for herself and the party featured most of their classmates, along with a few kids who Richie didn’t know but who Sarah knew from her old school. Richie and Eddie stood at the top of the stairs, surveying the improvised dance floor in the living room. _ Thriller _had just started blaring. Richie estimated they’d hear it around a hundred thousand times that night, but people weren’t sick of it yet and as a result, the dance floor was fairly busy. He could see Beverly in her hand-made Chucky costume, her red hair all tufted out, dancing with Ben, who was dressed in what he described as a book-accurate Dracula costume but essentially boiled down to an old-fashioned suit. It was cute, fun, kid dancing, the type where you just try to move on beat and flail around. Richie was fairly certain they both wanted to be doing something else, but both of them approached the situation like it was a foregone conclusion things wouldn’t happen. 

They drove Richie _ batshit _.

Mike was dressed as a cowboy, which meant he was mostly wearing old clothes he wore around the farm and a hat, but Mike was also tall and good-looking, which meant he could do anything he wanted. Richie couldn’t figure out if he was just jealous or what, but he found his gaze slipping back to Mike a little more than he wanted to necessarily admit. 

“What are you supposed to be?” Bill asked. He had appeared behind them with a rustle of plastic and made Eddie jump. “Just like, d-d-dead?”

“Conjoined twins. Nice work on the costume, big spender,” Richie said.

Bill was wearing a store-bought Darth Vader costume, fresh out of the packet. He had the helmet under his arm and a deeply unimpressed expression on his face.

“Georgie wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I came right from t-t-t…” He took a deep breath. “Trick or treating.”

“Got any candy?” Richie said. Bill dug in his pocket for a second and then gave him a Tootsie roll.

“My mom said you can’t trust candy you get from other people. She says a friend of hers, their kid, he got given candy laced with LSD,” Eddie said. 

“I wish this was laced with LSD,” Richie said. “Anyway, that’s bullshit. Your mom believes any fuckin’ urban legend she hears. Someone should ask her if she’s heard the legend of the boy with the biggest dick in Derry.”

“Fuck off, Richie.”

They went back downstairs to get more drinks. Sarah’s brother had provided; he was in the kitchen dropping off a crate of beer. He wasn’t in costume; he had close-cropped hair and was wearing a tightly-fitted tank with shades hanging from the front and Richie found himself navigating towards him without really considering why, Eddie trailing behind. He stopped to lean on the kitchen counter next to the brother, whose name he couldn’t remember. 

“Hey,” Richie said.

“Hey,” the brother said. “You one of Sarah’s friends?”

“Not really. Friends with her boyfriend. I’m Richie.”

“I see. Uh, Stan, right? Nice kid. Well, have a good party.”

“Oh, you’re going?” Richie said. “You don’t want to have a beer?”

The brother smiled good-naturedly, eyes flicking over Richie’s costume in a way that made Richie grin back with what could only be considered obnoxious over-eagerness, something in his chest lurching hopefully. He reached for a beer, holding it up like it was an offering. The brother laughed gently.

“No, that’s alright. Nice costume though, kid.” 

“My name’s Richie…” Richie started to say, but the brother was already leaving, heading out the side door to the garage. The sensation of hope deflated in Richie’s chest like a balloon.

He watched the brother vanish for a second before Eddie grabbed the can of beer out of his hand. Richie looked at Eddie with some surprise, even more when he actually cracked the can open and started chugging it.

“You don’t drink,” Richie said.

“I _ could, _” Eddie said. 

He was often an exceptionally prickly person, but this didn’t seem to be triggered by anything. Richie hadn’t even spoken to him for like, minutes, which was about as long as Richie ever went without speaking. Richie watched him chug the beer like he had something to prove, a rivulet leaking down the corner of his mouth, wildly uncomprehending of what was happening. 

“You sure can,” Richie said. 

“Why do you want to hang out with Sarah’s brother anyway?” Eddie said. There was an accusatory note in his voice that made Richie’s skin crawl.

“He’s in college. He could buy us beer easy. Get weed, even.”

“I’m not gonna smoke weed.”

“Yeah, well, no one asked you.”

Eddie glared and stormed out into the living room. Richie grabbed his own beer and resolved not to follow him, because he was being a bitch for no reason. He went to bother Mike instead, who was with Bill and a couple of girls from school on the other side of the kitchen, neither of whom looked particularly happy for Richie to be joining them. He had a vague memory of pissing them both off with some routine in class at the beginning of the semester, but couldn’t remember what it was.

“Nice costume. What are you like, a kid who died in a car crash?” Mike said.

“Where’s Eddie?” Bill said.

“I don’t know. What are we, attached at the hip?” Richie said.

“You’re being con-con-conjoined twins. So, yeah.”

“Whatever. He bugged out on me and ran off.”

Bill and Mike shrugged. Bill and the girls started talking about band, which Richie wasn’t in, Mike chipping in with thoughtful little comments that made Christine Chambers laugh and toss her hair over her shoulder, which kept catching the edge of Richie’s face. Richie glowered and drank his beer, giving up on the four of them because they were annoying him on a fundamental level.

He wandered over to where everyone was dancing and got immediately spotted by Bev. She had an arm slung around Ben’s shoulders and was bright-eyed and sparkling. Ben was looking at her like she was the morning sun, nursing his beer slowly. Jesus. Richie felt even more pissed off. But Beverly looked so happy, eagerly waving him over, and it felt deeply unfair of him to be rude to her. He put on a brave face.

“Richie!” She exclaimed gleefully. “Come dance with us!”

He sashayed his hips completely out of time to the Ghostbusters theme, which was what was currently playing, and Beverly laughed uproariously, letting go of Ben to grab one of Richie’s hands and tug him into the fray of dancers. There were maybe fifteen people dancing, and Richie knocked into some kid from out of town almost immediately, who looked at him like he was dirty chewing gum. He then tried to wink at Beverly, so Richie and Ben formed an immediate wall between her and the out of town kid. Beverly did not seem to notice, just spun like a top as Richie twirled her around. 

Richie finished his beer and then half of Ben’s can. He and Beverly developed an impromptu routine based mostly around twirling and swaying back and forth like a bad imitation of charmed snakes, which Beverly thought was the funniest thing in the fucking universe. It was great for a couple of songs, the two of them laughing and dancing, jiving about like they were children with absolutely no worries in the universe. But then Beverly latched onto Ben again, declared they needed their own dance too, and Richie suddenly started feeling left out. This was absurd; the Losers Club was about the _ seven _ of them, not about matching sets, but Richie was starting to feel a little what his mother would call ‘sensitive’ and what his therapists, twenty years down the line, would call ‘Generalised Anxiety Disorder’. 

“Where’s Eddie?” Bev said.

“How should I know?” Richie said, bitterly. He went back to the kitchen to get another drink.

Stanley was in the kitchen, in full John-Travolta-in-_ Grease _get-up but Richie didn’t really think it was funny anymore because Stan was doing his gross awkward nerd flirting with Sarah, which was fucking unbearable to watch. Richie didn’t know how there were girls who found the whole blushing and timid thing cute in guys, not that Richie thought about what was cute in guys. 

“You’re drinking all my beer,” Sarah said.

“It’s a fucking party, Sarah,” Richie said.

“Fuck me, Tozier, I was just making a joke.”

Stan gave Richie a wounded look but Richie ignored him, taking two beers.

“Is Eddie-”

“Fuck off,” Richie said.

He went back into the living room, but he didn’t want to dance and all the places to sit were gone, so he went into the dining room, where a group of kids were sitting around the table trying to use a Ouija board, screaming hysterically every time the planchette moved even though it was pretty fucking obvious that Duncan Anderson was the one moving it. Richie stood next to a girl he sort of recognised and thought was called Roberta, or something. She had a nice dress and cat ears on, which was not much of a costume, in Richie’s opinion.

“You got any weed?” Roberta or something asked.

“I wish,” Richie, who had never smoked weed because he lived in a small semi-rural town in northern Maine, said. 

“You look creepy.”

“Yeah, it’s Halloween. You look like a model.”

“Are you hitting on me?”

“What? No.”

Richie left the room of people trying to ask a ghost if it had ever sucked a dick and went upstairs to see what was happening up there. A couple of kids were sitting around smoking a cigarette in the hallway outside Sarah’s room and Richie suddenly recognised Eddie sitting with his chin in his hands, drinking a can of beer. Richie felt immediately relieved and stepped over some guy who was in his way to go sit by Eddie.

“What are you doing?” Richie said.

“Drinking,” Eddie said. He sounded fucking miserable.

“Let’s go dance,” Richie said. 

Eddie complained but Richie grabbed his hand and pulled him over the guy who was in their way, who muttered bitterly about being this close to the underneath of Richie’s hospital gown. Richie told him he _ wished _he could be closer and Eddie dragged them both off before they got into a fight. 

He realised pretty quickly that Eddie was drunk. This was ok, because Richie was also getting pretty drunk. He’d had four beers already and was starting in on his fifth. He had no idea how much Eddie had drunk, but they were both lurching about on the dance floor with the grace of someone trying to sit on a three-legged chair. He took Eddie by the hands, swinging him around like they were doing some kind of crazy waltz. Eddie was annoyed at first, complaining that Richie didn’t know what he was doing, but when he got spun around he started laughing and then it was easy. 

There was something so free about Eddie; it was like the stick had finally gotten pulled out of his ass. It probably had something to do with the alcohol, or maybe he was having a fucking manic episode. Richie didn’t know, but he was too drunk himself to really think that much about it. He had just started having a good time at last, and he liked the smile on Eddie’s face when Richie swung him into a dip, Eddie’s arms around his neck for support. Some goofy Halloween theme was playing and it was impossible to dance to it on time but none of that mattered. Richie had a hand on the small of Eddie’s back, and the spot of warmth there was making him feel even drunker.

Someone else cheered them on and Richie theatrically doffed an imaginary hat; it was easier to make out that it was all a joke and him and Eddie were in on it. It was a joke, of course, Richie just hadn’t really decided what the punchline was. Maybe it was just that it was hilarious to see a couple of guys dancing together, as if they were going steady. Maybe that was just the best joke in the world, all on its own.

Richie didn’t want to care. He looped an arm around Eddie’s waist and carried on with the mad, jerky waltz, their linked hands outstretched, interlaced fingers raised up like a triumphant fist. They were, for a little while, the whirling centre of the entire universe. Richie could imagine them looking now like they did in the photograph of them leaping into the quarry; ghostly shapes, streaks of light moving too fast and too free for anyone to follow where one ended and the other began, all while the world around them was held perfectly still and unchanging. He wanted that, maybe, for them to be able to fall free together and not to have anyone around them change or see; the whole world as impassive as the rock walls of the quarry. 

He bumped arms with someone and veered wildly away from them, Eddie laughing and clinging to him, arms heavy around his shoulders. But then the guy he’d hit grabbed Richie by the shoulders and swung him back around.

“You better watch where you’re fucking going,” the guy said. There was something in his voice and his eyes, the look crawling over Richie and Eddie like slugs on skin; it took a minute for Richie to realise it was disgust. 

The momentum shattering left Richie’s head spinning. He just took Eddie by the wrist and tugged him back out towards the kitchen, passing by the dancefloor entirely. He’d suddenly lost the spirit. 

Mike was in the kitchen. He looked surprised to see them.

“Whoa, you look wasted,” he said. “Eds, you better slow down. We gotta get you back to your mom in like, an hour.”

“I’m fine,” Eddie said. He did not sound fine. “I’m fucking seventeen years old, _ Michael _ , I’m supposed to have some… Some rebellion! I’m allowed to go a little crazy! That’s what being a teenager is _ about _.”

“He’s _ right _,” Richie said. “These are supposed to be the greatest years of our lives!”

“I fucking hope not,” Eddie said.

“Yeah, me neither. But it means we need to take _ this _ -” Richie grabbed a can of beer “-and put it in _ this _.” He slapped the can against Eddie’s chest. Eddie cracked the can open and began drinking it with the fortitude of someone who wasn’t entirely sure they weren’t going to puke in the next ten seconds but wanted to find out.

Richie shrugged and opened his own can. Mike just pulled a face, like he didn’t think it was all a good idea. Richie raised his eyebrows, maintaining eye contact the entire time he lifted the can to his mouth to take a drink, challenging Mike to say something. This made Eddie laugh a little too hard. 

"Fuck, you are drunk," Richie said to Eddie, which made Eddie laugh harder, which made Richie laugh too. 

They were still laughing when Richie turned around and crashed directly into _ the brother _, Sarah's brother, who was coming in from the garage again with another case of beer. Or that was what he had been doing, before Richie walked right into him and spilled an entire can of beer on them both. 

The brother looked down at the soaking wet mess of his tank top as Richie gaped at him uselessly. Eddie giggled hysterically. 

"You… Stupid little bitch!" The brother said. "These jeans are fucking Guess!"

Richie tried to fight to find something to say, but for once his mouth wasn't so quick. He could feel his entire body lighting up with embarrassment, his skin burning red under the sloppy scar make-up and painted on blood. He moved his mouth, but no sound came out. 

"How about you back the fuck off, you jumped-up Tom Cruise wannabe asswipe?" Eddie spat, with a force that just about knocked Richie's glasses off.

Then the brother punched Eddie in the nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Townie by Mitski
> 
> tfw youre a teenager and youre gay but you dont really get that youre gay and absolutely everything has to be a massive trial because you cant talk about your feelings 
> 
> [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay)  
[Tumblr!](http://saints-row-2.tumblr.com)  
[Other fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21064337/chapters/50109782)  
[picture of my cat!](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay/status/1192808546662006784?s=20)


	3. 1993: i was next to you and you were right there next to me

“Look at it this way, at least now you’ve been in a fight,” Richie said. 

“Do you really think  _ being in a fight _ was something I wanted to do?” Eddie said, his voice nasal as he pinched his nose to try and choke back some of the blood. He was crying a little bit. Richie was decent enough not to mention that.

“Sure, who doesn’t want to be in a fight?” Richie said.

“Me. I don’t. I’ve never wanted to be in a fight. Why would I want to be in a fight?”

“Then why did you call that guy all that shit?”

They were back in Sarah’s bathroom, getting real blood on her decorative hand towels. Someone had hammered on the door a second ago, but Richie just told them to fuck off. Eddie had needed a minute of sucking on his inhaler before Richie could even start to wipe up some of the blood and now they were helplessly trying to mop up some of the mess. In the back of Richie’s mind he could dimly remember something about alcohol making you bleed more easily, but he didn’t bring any of that up right now, because both of them were still pretty drunk and it wouldn’t be strictly helpful.

Eddie squirmed. He was still in his hospital gown, which was good, because it mostly protected his clothes from blood. The two of them were sitting with their legs tangled, Richie kneeling over him to try to help. Eddie was wearing Richie’s favourite shorts; this was not something Richie had ever verbalised, but it was something he had thought about. 

“He was being a fucking dick to you,” Eddie said. 

“People are dicks to us all the time,” Richie said. 

“Yeah, but that guy fucking sucked, ok? Why are you like, defending him?”

“I’m not  _ defending _ him.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“It was just like… Really cool, is all.”

Eddie turned an incredibly vivid shade of scarlet. Richie pinched his cheek between two fingers, like he was Eddie’s overenthusiastic aunt. Eddie slapped his hand away.

“Don’t be a fucking weirdo.”

“You’re just so cute!”

“I literally don’t understand what the fuck you’re talking about, ever. You’re so full of shit, Richie.”

“You’re full of shit. You were mad the second I met that guy.”

“Yeah, because he was some creep, but you were all over him.”

“What do you care if I’m trying to make friends?”

“Because he sucked!”

“You’re jealous.”

“I am not fucking jealous.”

“You’re jealous!”

Eddie slapped at him, but Richie was undeterred, cooing like he was handling a particularly boisterous puppy. He kissed Eddie on the forehead. It was meant to be a joke. It was obviously very funny. It was a very funny joke. Only he was drunk, and he missed, and he kissed Eddie on the lips. It was the kind of chaste, light peck on the lips that you might get if you were to gently tap two dolls together. That was about how romantic it was; a tiny little touch, like two strangers bumping elbows.

But then Eddie kissed him back. An actual kiss. And it was no longer two strangers bumping elbows as much as it was someone grabbing your arm; a clear and deliberate statement of intent. Richie’s world had been pleasantly teetering around on a layer of mild drunkenness, but now it was veering pretty wildly off-kilter as he tried to understand what was happening. When he and Eddie stared at each other, neither of them knew what had just happened. It was as if Eddie’s actions had been made out of subconscious instinct rather than thoughtful planning. His face, stained with blood and make-up, the scars peeling off, was a perfect mask of shock. 

Richie leaned in again. Slower, and with more purpose. He had kissed two other people before; Melissa Warren, when the two of them were thirteen and playing spin the bottle, and Stephanie McRyan, when they were sixteen, and she had been briefly interested in going out with him, before he immediately intentionally sabotaged it because he suddenly realised he didn’t like kissing her that much and really didn’t want to do it again. He had not kissed a boy before; the idea of doing so had occurred to him, but he had not interrogated this fact anymore than was absolutely necessary. But he was going to kiss Eddie again now, if Eddie let him.

If either of them spoke it would be over. There was a thin, tentative layer of silence that was holding all of this together like so many fragile strands of web. Anything too clumsy would break it. Eddie’s breath was hot on his face and coming in soft, shallow bursts. Richie’s mouth felt absurdly dry. He kissed Eddie so lightly that it was as if he was trying not to set off a landmine.

Then the door swung open and Richie leapt away from Eddie like he’d been electrocuted. Mike and Stan stood in the doorway, staring at them. Eddie and Richie stared back.

“Sarah wants you guys to get out,” Stan said. “Her brother is pissed.”

“Eddie, we need to go anyway,” Mike said. “Your mom is gonna freak.”

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie said, and promptly puked on himself.

* * *

They were crammed into the front of Mike’s truck. Eddie was half-slumped over Richie’s shoulder, barely awake, which was making Richie feel like every inch of him was on fire. He couldn’t look at Eddie, could only sit and stare out the windshield, unmoving. Mike next to them was doing his fucking best to stay calm, but he kept looking at Eddie with wide, worried eyes and it was making Richie more anxious. Richie felt like he was going to fucking incinerate. He wished he would. Eddie’s head was on his shoulder and he could feel a few hairs brushing against his cheek and it was making him feel profoundly insane. 

He hadn’t even thought about facing Eddie’s mother until they pulled up outside Eddie’s house and he locked eyes with her standing on the front porch, and then it was like all the blood was running out of his body at once. Sonia Kaspbrak was standing vigil like a gargoyle and the second she saw Eddie she screamed like a thing possessed and raced out to the truck. Eddie, with his mother’s voice breaking through his semi-conscious state, lurched awake and tried to wipe his face with his already dirty hands, but that didn’t really make any difference; Mrs Kapsbrak was yanking the door of Mike’s truck open and pulling Eddie out like she was trying to save him from a house fire. She was screaming in a way that made the small bones in Richie’s inner ear vibrate painfully. 

“What have you done?!” She demanded, dragging Eddie to his feet.

“Don’t worry Mrs K, the blood is fake,” Richie called out through the open door. Most of it was, at least.

“I’m o… I’m ok, mom,” Eddie tried to babble, but Mrs Kaspbrak wasn’t listening, just pointing with wildly accusatory fingers, like a devil ramming a pitchfork into a sinner.

“You…  _ Horrible _ little monsters!” She yelled. “If you ever, if you  _ ever _ come near Eddie again, I will have you  _ arrested _ !”

“Ok, Mrs Kaspbrak, we’ll…” Mike tried to say, but Richie interrupted.

“He’s not, like, a baby, you know,” Richie slurred. He sounded drunker than he realised. Maybe it was because he could still feel Eddie’s skin on his and the buzz of that was making him dizzy. “You treat him like he’s a fuckin’... Delicate little flower, but he’s  _ not _ . Eddie is  _ cool _ .”

“If someone like  _ you  _ thinks that he’s  _ cool _ ,” Mrs Kaspbrak spat, like the words were laced with venom, “then that just proves he needs to be away from you before you get him killed.”

She slammed the door of the truck so hard that it rocked on its tires, dragging Eddie back towards the house. Eddie was trying to pull himself out of her grip, but she was bigger and stronger than he was. Richie, who did not habitually see Eddie as particularly weak, was struck suddenly by how powerless Eddie looked next to her. Richie felt powerless himself. The Kaspbraks’ arguing was semi-audible all the way from the truck right up until the front door slammed behind them. Richie sank so low in his seat he was nearly on the floor.

“Let’s get you home,” Mike said, gently. He probably couldn’t have said something worse if he’d tried.

* * *

“Well, Sarah broke up with me. I hope you’re happy.”

Stan was standing and staring down at Richie, who was lying across three seats in the school cafeteria and blocking anyone from sitting down on that side of the table. He’d just been told off by Mrs Hanks for this, but had lain back down the second she’d turned her back. None of the others were particularly invested in stopping him from getting in trouble again; Richie was too frequently in trouble for misbehaving for them not to pick their battles carefully.

“Sure, Stan the Man, I’m ecstatic,” Richie said. “Why’d she dump you?”

“Because she got mad about you and Eddie being jerk-offs at the party and I had to defend you,” Stan said. He kicked the seat under Richie’s head until Richie sat up and let Stan sit down. 

“Aww, you chose us over her?” Richie said, propping his elbows on the table and fluttering his eyelashes at Stan, who was glowering. 

“One day, Richie, you’re going to cause someone’s divorce,” Beverly said, glancing up from the homework she was working on. Richie didn’t know if it was due in the next class or had just been handed out from the last one, but both felt fairly likely. 

“Yeah,” Bill agreed, “his own.”

“At least I’m gonna get married, unlike the rest of you losers. I’ll be on wife ten by the time you’ve managed to blackmail some old crone into going on a single date with you,” Richie said.

“Is that m-m-m-meant to make you sound, like, good?”

“You didn’t need Sarah anyway, Stan, you’re way better off without her.” Richie tried to tug over Stan’s lunchbox to look inside but it got snatched away from him before he had a chance to steal a bag of chips. “You have AP Gov with Eddie, right? Did you see him? He wasn’t in homeroom.”

“No,” Stan said, holding his chips at an angle where Richie wouldn’t be able to take them. 

“Fuck. His Mom must be keeping him home again. I didn’t see him all weekend after me and Mike took him home.”

“He has a chem quiz tomorrow,” Beverly said, leaning over the table to effortlessly take a handful of Stan’s chips while Richie watched forlornly. “He better come in for that or Mrs Berry is gonna flip.” 

“His Mom does not give a fuck if he graduates at all. She probably hopes he doesn’t. She for sure doesn’t want him to go to college.” 

The topic of Eddie’s mother came up a lot when Eddie wasn’t around. The contempt the Losers had for her as a group only grew with every year and was getting to the point where half of them wouldn’t even be civil to her face. Beverly and Richie’s disdain for her was open and Stan and Bill only had the thinnest veil of politeness, which barely passed muster. Mike and Ben were the only ones who just had too many manners to bring themselves to be rude to an adult. She had a particular air to her;  _ this is not meant to be how a parent behaves _ , a feeling of wrongness that had unnerved them all since childhood, though they were only now really able to understand why. 

“He’s smart, he’ll be ok,” Bill said.

Richie did not say his other thought; that if Eddie didn’t get into college, then maybe that’d be just fine, because he didn’t think he’d get into college either. And then the two of them could team up, and maybe it wouldn’t be Richie on his own driving whatever shitty little car he could afford to a place more worth living than this hellhole. He thought about that a lot, but it was not something that he shared with the others. If pressed, he couldn’t explain his need for privacy, only that it was just a fantasy for Richie to indulge in on his own, something to think about during long, slow classes where any feelings of responsibility were dwarfed by the desire to slip back into the pleasant fantasy of driving down a long road with the roof down and Eddie laughing in the passenger seat next to him.

He had been thinking about Eddie a lot. Not seeing him in class had hung over him like a dark cloud and knowing he was unlikely to do so all day had sucked all the energy right out of him. He was now starting to think more in terms of how soon he could get out of school and get away with it than he was the necessity of handing in his homework in fifth period. Looking at Ben and thinking about leaving him in the lurch alone for all of Phys ed was the only thing keeping Richie’s butt in his seat. Damn loyalty. 

He had not been thinking about the kiss. There was nothing to think about.

“So, it’s my birthday in two weeks,” Richie said. 

“Oh God,” Beverly said, wincing preemptively at whatever Richie was going to say. “Yeah?”

“Party at my place, bring a lot of alcohol. And as many people as you can.”

“Since when?” Bill said. “I th-thought we were doing video games and movies.”

“Yeah, well. New plan. My parents are gone for the night anyway. We might as well. Come on!” Richie slapped his hands together to try and rustle up some enthusiasm. “What’s the fucking point of being young, man?”

“Is this because you didn’t get laid on Halloween?” Ben said.

“I did, actually, you should ask your mom about it,” Richie said. “ _ Guys _ , don’t be such fuckin’ drags. Party! Party! Party!”

With every exclamation he banged his fists on the top of the cafeteria table until Rachel Jenkins on the next table leaned over to ask what was going on and then the word was out; Richie Tozier was having a party at his place. BYOB.

* * *

It was dark when Richie got to Eddie’s place, but that made sense. It was November, and that meant it was dark at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and it was pitch black by 7 PM. Richie climbed over the fence around the Kaspbraks’ backyard so he could throw stones at Eddie’s window, the pebbles rattling off it with a thunderous echo for half a minute before it was finally thrown open and Eddie stuck his head out. Eddie did not look pleased to see him.

“If you break my window my Mom is gonna fucking kill me,” he hissed.

“I just wanted to make sure that you hadn’t like, choked to death on your own vomit or something,” Richie said. “Why weren’t you in school?”

“You know why. Mom said I was sick. I’m going to sneak out tomorrow, though, I have a test.”

“Yeah. Bev was worried you’d miss it. Hey, are you coming to my birthday party?”

“Of course I am, idiot. Wait, what party? I thought we were watching  _ RoboCop _ .” 

“No, we’re having a party now.”

“Oh. Ok.” Eddie looked less pleased with this than Richie had necessarily been hoping.

There was silence for a moment. Richie thought for a moment about asking him about Halloween; if he remembered any of it, what he’d thought, if he was repulsed by the sight of him now. Apparently not. The other question  _ do you want to kiss like that again _ was too horrible to even consider. There was no way Richie could possibly ask that, or even allow himself to think it. So, he would do the next best thing. He would recreate the circumstances as closely as he could and wait to see what happened. If it was meant to be… If it was… He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

Eddie glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening. He leaned further out of the window, whispering into the wind. The breeze ruffled his painfully neat hair a little. He looked pale. Richie could see his collarbones under the neckline of his T-shirt. 

“Are we going to get drunk and stuff?” Eddie said. “Like… Last time?” 

“Yeah,” Richie said. 

He wasn’t sure if Eddie was going to rule this out completely or not, but Eddie just nodded, as if he’d made a solemn vow. Richie didn’t know what to do with his hands all of a sudden; he tried crossing his arms but that felt weird and he ended up cramming them deep into his pockets, hunching his shoulders. 

“You should go before my Mom catches us,” Eddie said.

“See ya at school, Eds.”

Richie ran away, waving a hand goodbye as he hopped back over the fence. When he glanced back, he could still see Eddie’s face watching him go, all the way until Richie had to turn a corner and vanish out of sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is (If You’re Wondering If I Want You to) I Want You To by Weezer
> 
> thank you to ezra for explaining how american schools works because i really dont know ANYTHING about them
> 
> i would describe this fic as slow-burn but not in the way you expect
> 
> [twitter!](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay)
> 
> [tumblr!](http://saints-row-2.tumblr.com)
> 
> [my other fic!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21064337/chapters/50109782)
> 
> [some IT art i posted the other day!](https://rantshemlock.tumblr.com/post/189020823391/richie-tozier-knows-what-happens-to-boys-like-him)


	4. 1993: and when you want to live, how do you start?

The thing about being unpopular — which Richie was through no choice of his own — was that people would still show up if you had enough to entice them into joining. No, most of the kids at school didn’t like Richie Tozier, but they liked the sound of an excuse to get drunk on a random Saturday in the middle of November, and enough people showed up to make it happen. Richie’s parents, who had granted their son’s sole birthday wish of ‘please just leave the house for one night’ had departed for his grandparents’, on the promise he would come and visit Meemaw the next day. He had sussed this out pretty quickly as a move on his parents’ behalf to make sure he wouldn’t drink too much to be unable to meet them for lunch the following day, and Richie had absolutely no intention of keeping that promise. The repercussions for getting in trouble did not feel severe enough to put him off the rewards of getting hammered.

Half the grade ended up showing up, which was great, because more people meant more distractions. A small group wouldn’t let Richie have any time to get away, something that was hanging on his mind more than he could admit. Almost from the second he started letting people into the house he was thinking about the opportunities he would have to get away from the group. No reason he needed to, of course. Just that he knew his parents locked their door and that he was the only one in the house with a key. Just in case. 

Most of the Losers, including Eddie, showed up early and helped Richie do the important things. Which, for teenagers, meant moving valuable things out of the way — Eddie’s idea — and ordering enough pizza to keep a couple of dozen people happy, which just about wiped out the Losers’ collective impromptu party fund. The birthday money that hadn’t gone into Richie’s car fund had been largely spent on the drinks; Beverly always knew which convenience stores would sell to teenagers, and between the two of them and Mike’s truck they’d managed to haul in a good amount of drink. Richie was almost proud looking at the kitchen counter with its formica surface covered in 8-packs of beer and enough red cups to build another boy out of. Bill hovered anxiously by his elbow.

“Are you s-sure about this?” Bill said. 

“Yeah? It’s gonna be fucking awesome,” Richie said.

“You just like, d-d-didn’t care about it at all and now it’s b-b-been like all you can talk about.”

“You’ll know how it is when you finally get some hair on your balls, Bill.”

Bill rolled his eyes so hard they nearly came out of his head and went to help Stan move the rug in the living room to the safety of Richie’s parents’ room, under Ben’s quiet advice and Eddie’s authoritative shout that beer wouldn’t come out of a cream rug, probably. The living room looked twice the size with all the clutter cleaned out of it and the couches pushed up to the walls, and Richie stood in the centre feeling like king of the fucking world.

People started actually arriving at about seven o’clock, coming in with crates of beer or hard lemonade, or the occasional bottle of something more exotic — whiskey or rum stolen from their parents, a couple of bottles of margarita mix — garnishing the supplies in the kitchen. Richie turned up _ Smells Like Teen Spirit _until the windows rattled and told everyone to do whatever the fuck they wanted. His adrenaline was through the roof, grinning like a jack-o-lantern and sharing one of the bottles of margarita mix with Beverly, the two of them passing it back and forth while they watched things get under way. 

Teen parties were easy. People entertained themselves, once you put enough alcohol and other teens they wanted to hit on in front of them. Mostly they were having their first drinks, descending on the pizza like a plague of locusts. Richie was too loopy and antsy to eat; most of his conversations were half-hearted attempts at barely listening, too worked up to actually concentrate. Bev punched him in the shoulder when she realised he wasn’t paying attention to her story about what happened to Greta in phys ed, but even that act of horrific violence couldn’t dim his energy.

He kept looking at Eddie. Eddie kept looking at him. They were walking around the party almost always on the other side of the room for hours; to an outsider it would look like they were avoiding each other. Eddie was in the kitchen eating pizza while Richie was hanging out with Beverly and Stan in the living room; Richie was shotgunning a beer in the kitchen with a kid he barely knew from English lit while Eddie was sitting on the stairs with Bill yelling music recommendations at Mike, who was trying to operate the stereo, laughing and dropping Richie’s sizable tape collection everywhere. Every now and again they would glance at each other, like when Richie was getting drunken birthday bumps from a group of boys he fucking hated, or when Eddie had been lifted onto Ben’s shoulders for the amusement of the cheering crowd, and when their eyes met it was like a silent question. _ Do you remember _?

The music kept playing too loud, the pizza all vanished, Louis from Spanish class had to be taken to the toilet so he could puke while the others hollered through the door that he was a pussy, Richie made himself the centre of attention by following Cloe, Stacey and Jessica S in Derry High’s cheer routine. The empty margarita mix bottle was reappropriated for spin the bottle.

“Are you alright?” Stan asked Richie at about eleven, when most of the party was either threatening to destroy the living room dancing or sitting in a circle around the bottle. At that moment, they were all screaming outrageously as Bill gave Beverly the politest peck on the lips imaginable while Ben watched, stony-faced. 

“I’m fucking great, Stan the Man,” Richie said. He was sitting on the stairs, king of his domain. He felt light-headed but exhilarated, the noise and the action keeping him wild-eyed. Stan pulled a face.

“Just, like, take it easy,” Stan said. 

“I’ll take it easy when I’m dead!” Richie said, attempting to crush his can of beer on his head and only succeeding in smacking himself on the forehead hard enough to bruise.

Stan sighed loudly and sat on the stairs next to Richie, inspecting his forehead for any signs of blood. It would have been a sweet gesture, but Richie was a little distracted. Eddie was sitting in the ring of people playing spin the bottle and it was his turn. Richie squeezed the crumpled can in his hand as Eddie span the bottle. Wobbling, it twirled around until it hit Cloe, who laughed pleasantly and leaned across the circle to kiss Eddie. Obeying the laws of the game, Eddie leaned over as well, kissing her softly on the lips and never taking his eyes off Richie.

Richie stood up suddenly, bumping against Stan’s shoulders.

“Actually I think I’m going to go lie down,” he announced. Stan stared at him, muttering a ‘Sure?’ as Richie turned his back on him and ran full-pelt up the stairs to his parents' room at the end of the hall, fumbling for the key to get in.

It was dark and quieter in there, the music distant enough to be pleasantly atmospheric instead of ear-splitting, and Richie fell backwards onto the bed like a dead body dropping. The furniture they’d crammed in there formed odd shadows in the darkness, looming and unfamiliar in the relatively unchanging landscape of his familial home. Richie giggled to himself about how much of a mess he was, arms angeling out around him.

“What’s so funny?”

Richie sat up on his elbows. Eddie was standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame.

“Your face,” Richie said.

“Idiot,” Eddie said, but he was smiling.

He walked into the room and fell onto the bed next to Richie, bouncing on the mattress once and laughing. He was tipsy also, maybe not as drunk as he’d been on Halloween but still buzzed. Someone was playing Richie’s Depeche Mode tape but the music was too distorted through the floorboards for him to tell what it was. He wasn’t focusing on that anyway; he was watching the way Eddie’s hand was searching across the blankets for his own, his heart thundering in his chest like a piston.

Their hands touched in the darkness and Eddie slipped his fingers inside Richie’s, clutching at him gently. Richie smiled, unseen, feeling the fine bones of Eddie’s hand in his. Richie was immensely conscious of how sweaty his own hand was, but Eddie didn’t seem to notice, or at least not to mind. 

“You like Cloe now, then?” Richie asked.

“I don’t even know her. You were dancing with her,” Eddie said.

“You kissed her.”

“That was the game.”

Eddie moved closer to Richie, so their shoulders were touching. His breath smelled like beer and his normally very neat hair was a mess. Richie felt very compelled to touch it and almost without taking the time to think about it, he was reaching up to run his fingers through Eddie’s hair, strands falling through his fingers. Eddie inhaled softly, a sound so gentle that no one but Richie could have ever heard; a tiny thing that said _ right now, the only person in my world is you _.

There were so many things that Richie wanted to say but he was terrified of all of them — what if after he spoke, Eddie didn’t like him? What was happening felt like a delicate thing, something that Richie’s clumsy, impulsive, childish words would tear through like a foot through cracked ice. Eddie was watching him with eyes half dipped in darkness that still shone through the small light that came through his parents’ lace curtains. Richie squeezed his hand.

Eddie kissed him first again; maybe Eddie was just braver than he was. It didn’t matter, it only mattered that Eddie wanted to, and that he would, and that they were lying on the bed kissing so sweetly that Richie was sure no one could have _ ever _ kissed like this before. This kiss had been invented just for them, and while many would pray they would be able to someday imitate it, none would ever be able to. It was, in his eighteen year old mind, the greatest kiss in the history of humankind.

When they’d kissed once it was easier to kiss again, chasing each other and chasing that same high and it only felt like it could get better. They should have made art of this moment; fuck the Mona Lisa, there should have been oil paintings of the way they kissed. Fuck the Sistine Chapel, or the statue of David, or any of those other monuments and statues and works of art. Richie did not think there would ever be anything as beautiful as the way it felt to kiss Eddie Kaspbrak when they were both eighteen and believed this could be the whole of their lives, forever.

Someone thundered up the hallway and the two of them sprang apart like criminals caught in the act. When Mike creaked the door open the two of them were sitting on opposite sides of the bed like strangers who didn’t want to share a table. If he noticed anything, Mike said nothing about it. Richie’s heart was beating so hard and so fast he thought he might throw up.

“Hey, uh, most of the others are gonna leave now. Shit’s kind of winding down,” Mike said. “It’s, uh, kind of a mess.”

“We’ll sort it out in the morning,” Richie said. “You guys are staying overnight, right?”

“You know I can’t,” Eddie said, his voice suddenly sounding a million miles away. He might as well have been.

“Well, Stan’s gotta go home soon, he could give you a ride,” Mike said. There was a growing look of concern in his eyes, as if he’d picked up on something unsaid in the atmosphere that was troubling him. 

“Ok, yeah,” Eddie said. He quickly stood up, shuffling out of the door past Mike. When the hallway light hit his face it illuminated how flushed red he was. He did not stop to say goodbye. Richie clenched the blanket in two fists.

“Don’t worry man, me and the others will help clean up,” Mike said. 

It wasn’t what he was worried about, but Richie was grateful anyway, and he smiled up at Mike.

“Fuck it, we’ll do it in the morning,” he said.

* * *

They did not.

Bill woke up at 12:45 when Richie’s parents arrived home and the front door slammed open, right before Mrs Tozier let out a scream of horror and anger that would be more suited to a dragon than a forty-five year old county clerk, jerking upright like a vampire bursting out of its coffin. This scared awake Mike, who had been sleeping using Bill as a makeshift pillow, which had a ripple effect of waking up Ben and Beverly, who were also sprawled sleeping on the bed next to them. All five of them had passed out on Richie’s parents’ bed at around 2:30 in the morning, a few hours after everyone else had left and after a half-hearted attempt to corral some of the trash into vaguely the same area so they could more easily pick it up ‘later’ had ended with them mostly just throwing empty beer cans at each other. 

The four of them who were awake scrambled off the bed and charged downstairs in disorganised, half-asleep panic, with absolutely no plan and maybe three brain cells between them. They were met by Richie’s parents standing in the front hall, both of whom had expressions on their faces like they saw the point Abraham was making when he bound Isaac to that rock. 

_ Richie _ woke up at 12:50 PM when his friends’ attempts to delay his parents had run dry and his father had burst into the room where Richie was still passed out, drooling on the bed while Bill stood behind Mr Tozier and stuttered through his excuse more than he had in years. Richie jerked awake, rolling over onto his back to see his father’s face looming out of the fog towards him, shrieked, and fell off the bed.

Playing dead on the floor did not fly. He was marched out of the room and downstairs to face justice while his friends were tossed out of the house despite their protests that it was _totally their_ _fault _and the insistence that they’d help, their agonised expressions of sympathy the last thing Richie saw before the front door was slammed shut and he was left, sitting on the couch surrounded by trash and flanked on either side by his parents.

“I thought I was going to meet you at grandma’s,” he said weakly.

“Yes, for some reason I had a bad feeling about that plan,” his father said. He was not in particularly good humour about this stunt. “So, I thought we should come by and pick you up.”

“I cannot believe you,” his mother said. “You promised me that you weren’t going to do anything like this, and I believed you. What in God’s name were you thinking, Richie?”

“I’m eighteen! I wanted to have a real party!”

“And if you might recall, the drinking age in the fine state of Maine is _ twenty-one _,” Mr Tozier said. 

“Well, that’s not _ my _fault.”

It turned out that neither of them were in the mood for jokes. Richie got told that he’d be lucky if they let him out of the house for the rest of the year, which was coincidentally the exact same week that Richie started sneaking out of his house by removing the screen from his window and climbing down the drainpipe on the back of the house. 

The first time he did this was a week after his birthday, on a Friday night at 9PM. Ben had said in school that his mom was out for the night on a date with her new boyfriend — a banker from Bangor called Ron, who Ben thought was a pretty nice guy — so they had free run of the house. Bill had to babysit and Stan and Mike were busy, which left Ben, Beverly, and Eddie. And Richie. Richie was going to make it there. 

It was maybe a mile to Ben’s house but Richie took his bike from where he’d left it at the back of the yard and made it there in pretty good time, even if it was cold enough to freeze his fingers to the handlebars. He let himself into Ben’s house and found the others watching _ The Breakfast Club _ on VHS which made Richie groan dramatically, hurling himself onto the sofa beside Eddie. He stretched out, jabbing his cold feet into Eddie’s leg and making him growl with annoyance, draping his arm over the back of the couch. Beverly was lying on a pile of cushions on the floor, eating popcorn out of an enormous bowl she was sharing with Ben, who was sitting next to her. 

“Did you sneak out or are you off the hook?” Ben said.

“Snuck out. How come your Mom just lets you do whatever you want?” Richie said. 

“She trusts me,” Ben said, as if this was simple and obvious. “She knows I’m going to do my homework and chores on time and I’m not going to get into trouble… I think she’s mostly happy I have friends.”

Bev murmured sympathetically and patted Ben on the leg. She was sporting freshly scraped knees and had cut her waterfall of red hair back to shoulder length again, and looked effortlessly cool in the drab living room. Richie envied her in some way he couldn’t really put into words; maybe it was just that he knew she was cooler than him, or maybe it was because she could be as freely affectionate as she liked without anyone thinking anything of it, including herself. 

“Mommy’s little boy, I get it,” Richie said. “Check this out, Momma’s boy.”

He pulled a bottle of vodka out from under his jacket and held it aloft like a trophy. Ben and Beverly stared at it dubiously. 

“We’re just hanging out, Richie,” Beverly said, smiling a little but also frowning, like she couldn’t understand why he’d escalated the casual meeting.

“Come on, live a little,” Richie said. “You got any soda?”

“Oh, my _ God _, are you actually peer-pressuring me? Like for real?” Beverly laughed. “Am I in a D.A.R.E PSA?”

Richie looked at Eddie for confirmation or approval, but Eddie just shook his head. The rejection, however minor, stung and Richie’s mood plummeted like someone had shot a balloon out of the sky. He dumped the closed bottle on the ground next to him and rolled his eyes, trying to play off the sudden change in his mood.

“Alright, if you guys are gonna be lame about it,” he said. He was trying to seem unaffected but he was, in fact, hurt. He couldn’t express it because he didn’t even really understand himself why he was so upset; only that the fact Eddie was disinterested made him want to curl up somewhere and die. 

“Are you upset?” Beverly said.

“No. I just think you guys suck, is all. Not my fault.”

“Richie, we can’t get drunk every night,” Eddie said. 

“Why not?” Richie said. “Maybe I like who I am when I’m drunk.”

“We have to be normal sometimes.”

Eddie’s face was incredibly still. His expression was inscrutable, eyes too dark to be read. Richie’s tongue felt too big for his mouth. He tried to swallow and found he couldn’t, biting down painfully on the edges of his tongue. The hurt inside him was enormous, a strange, alien hurt he couldn’t compare to anything else but that made him feel like a criminal hiding amongst innocents. 

“You’re the same person when you’re drunk,” Beverly said. Richie turned to look at her. He’d almost forgotten she was there. “You’re just like, louder.”

“You laugh a lot when you’re drunk,” Ben said to Beverly. 

“God, I do. It’s so embarrassing.” 

The movie kept playing and Beverly talked about how much more she liked Ally Sheedy before she had the makeover and Ben agreed; Richie had a burst of annoyance that Ben was clearly just sucking up to her but a wave of guilt followed immediately because he was being unfair to his friends. Eddie flicked a piece of popcorn at Richie and tried to smile, but it was impossible to match it sincerely. The last twenty minutes of the film dragged on for all of eternity and Richie got out of his seat the second the credits started to roll. He shoved the bottle back inside his jacket. Bev looked at him with huge, disappointed eyes from her position lying on the floor, head on Ben’s shoulder.

“We’re gonna watch _ Ferris Bueller _ next,” she said, sounding a little plaintive. “You love _ Ferris Bueller _.”

"I'm grounded. I should get home before I get caught," Richie said.

"You don't have to go," Eddie said. He looked guilty. It didn't make Richie feel any better.

"I just don't want my parents to freak out. I'll see you guys at school."

They all called after him as he walked out, asking him to come back, but he just walked faster. If he looked back at them now he didn't know if he'd be able to stop the tears he had building inside himself like smoke from a house fire from exploding out, which might as well have been a death sentence. He was eighteen, which was too old to be crying about anything. 

He biked back to his house and snuck in through the back door. His parents did not seem to notice they'd never heard him come downstairs, assumed he was just scrounging for some late night snacks and told him not to eat too much junk food. Richie went up to his room and turned off the light so he wouldn't have to look at the photographs above his bed.

He fell asleep at some point but woke up a couple of hours later, hearing a soft _ tap tap tap _. He lurched out of bed, swinging his head around wildly until he realised the sound was coming from his window. Richie walked across the room and threw open the window, sticking his head out. 

In the work in progress that was Mr Tozier's backyard, with its half-filled flowerbeds and the incomplete vegetable patch, Eddie stood by the big oak tree with a fistful of pebbles, staring up at Richie. In the dark, he looked like a strange colourless ghost, the moonlight reflecting off his dark eyes. Richie's heart was in his throat.

"I think you're an idiot, but I don't want you to be mad at me," Eddie called up to him, his voice strained in the night. 

"I'm not mad at you," Richie said.

"Good. Because I know what I said, but I didn't mean… I don't think you're a freak, or anything. I didn't mean that."

"You better not have, because that'd be throwing stones in glass houses. No one's freakier than you, Kaspbrak."

Eddie growled with annoyance, which made Richie laugh. Eddie glanced up at him, trying not to smile. 

"Whatever, asshole. I did feel bad, but that was before I forgot you suck," Eddie said.

"You better go before your mom gets mad you're not tucked up safe in bed," Richie said.

"Yeah, yeah." 

Eddie started to move like he was going to leave but then hesitated by the tree, hands twitching together. Even in the dark Richie could see that he was nervous, struggling with something. There was a pang in Richie's chest, and he wished he was close enough to hold one of those fidgeting hands, to hold Eddie still and comfort the worries. The thought made Richie flush red and he was glad Eddie was probably too far away to see.

"I liked it," Eddie said.

"Liked what?"

"When… We were drunk. That was my first kiss. I liked it."

"Oh. Me too."

Eddie looked around like he was trying to think of something else to say, but the courage or wisdom escaped him and he just slipped out of the back gate, picking up his bike outside. Richie stayed and watched until his figure vanished into the night completely, fingers frozen onto the window frame tight enough to leave a scar. 

It was the first time either of them had called it a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is The Boy with the Thorn in His Side by The Smiths


	5. 1993: god only knows what i'd be without you

November rolled into December, the weather turning colder and the days growing shorter. Richie snuck out of the house at least once a week; he was caught several times and told his punishment would extend in perpetuity, but there was a hollowness to his mother’s words that made him completely lose all faith in her ability or will to do so. His parents had very quickly realised that keeping Richie in the house and only allowing him out to go to school or work was asking for their home to be turned into a circus as he tried to think of new ways to amuse himself. Their patience for this ran thin extremely quickly. 

The next time Eddie and Richie kissed was the first snowfall of the year in mid-November; they went down the Barrens alone, not inviting anyone else, and wandered amongst the snow-covered slopes, checked out the icy river. Richie shoved snow down the back of Eddie’s sweater and Eddie pelted him with fistfuls of snow in revenge, the two of them running through the hills of the Barrens shouting and laughing like they were thirteen and fearless again. They ended up crashing into the clubhouse, wet from melted snow and ice, fighting over the hammock neither of them really fit in anymore until they were sick from laughing. Richie had beers he’d shoplifted with Bev from the convenience store near his work — with Hanukkah and Christmas coming up he’d spotted a great time to get money from both sides of the family and was trying not to spend more of his car fund than he absolutely had to — and they drank a couple of bottles lying on the dirt floor of the clubhouse, ignoring how the water soaked through their coats. That time Richie kissed Eddie first, rolling over to kiss him gently while Eddie was still complaining about a bad joke he’d made, the laughter easily fading into love.

Richie waited for winter break the way a starving man waited for his next meal. School made him crazy; it felt like all anyone talked about anymore was college and the SATs. His English teacher pulled him aside one lunchtime and asked why he wasn’t doing more to make sure he got into a good college, and Richie couldn’t think of a polite way to say he’d rather die. She seemed disappointed, but Richie couldn’t bring himself to care. School felt like a kind of Sisyphean torture and the closer he got to the end the less he cared; he followed the rules less and less, because none of it felt like it really had any impact on him anymore. It didn’t matter if Mrs Lumley thought he was smart enough to do better, the ‘better’ was worthless. He lectured his friends with impromptu speeches about how manufactured and unnatural the entire school system was, but Bill just asked him why he couldn’t put that kind of energy into Gov and Richie had been thrown into a bad mood for half the day. Sometimes he didn’t get why his friends were so happy to go along with the established order when they all knew it was bullshit. He’d spent a lunch break explaining to them why the healthcare system in America was so bad and why it meant the whole system was fucked after Clinton failed to get it changed, but he’d talked too loud and too fast and ended up in an argument with Josh Doyle, who was a young Republican, and been marched out of the canteen and into detention.

December came and Richie pinned new photographs to his wall after everyone slept over at Stan’s place and Stan used the opportunity to test out the new flash on his camera. They all ended up half-blind from the light and with dozens of photos of them all cringing and pulling faces, which Richie was more than happy to add to his collection. The night together had meant that Eddie and Richie found a quiet moment to make out in the bathroom, both half-drunk off the vodka Richie had stolen from his parents, and had nearly been caught by Stan who expressed in no uncertain terms that he  _ didn’t  _ want to know what they’d been doing in the bathroom together. Richie made a joke about ‘doing weird gay shit’ and laughed harder than anyone else.

He wrote a lot, but not for school. His assignments gathered dust while he obsessively watched stand-up and wrote his own material, filling pages of notebooks with lengthy monologues that he’d practice in the shower or in front of the mirror. He never read it  _ to  _ anyone. He would find ways of slipping bits into his conversation, watching carefully to see how people reacted, but he knew it wasn’t the same as performing. His shelves were cluttered with tapes of George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, anyone he could get his hands on. He’d watch anyone who was on TV with an intensity that pissed his parents off because they didn’t understand why it couldn’t be transferred to the algebra homework he had rotting in his room. They didn’t get that, for Richie, trying to make it all the way through work he didn’t care about was like asking him to tear his own teeth out one by one. 

Sometimes his friends got it, but they all seemed to have an annoying level of brilliance that meant they were just  _ naturally _ better than him. It wasn’t that they didn't work hard as well, or that they were all equally great at everything, but they all excelled at  _ something _ . Eddie, Stan, and Beverly worked their asses off and succeeded at just about everything because of the effort they were willing to put in. Beverly and Eddie needed the scholarships they could only get through high SAT scores, and Stan just had a work ethic that seemed impossibly mature for a teenager and a level of bizarre certainty about his life that baffled Richie, but meant he could pull ahead even in subjects he was weaker in. Ben and Bill both had more severe strengths and weaknesses on the opposite ends of the scale; Bill couldn’t get his head around algebra but excelled in English, while Ben was brilliant at any physics question but had a poor memory for literary themes. But all this meant was that they could help each other, picking up the other’s slack. Richie had attempted to relay a lot of this to Mike, but it quickly became apparent after a little discussion that the work Mike was doing at home was AP coursework on a level above Richie entirely, and the conversation became more about him offering to tutor history classes. Richie did not take him up on this.

The end of high school was the first time Richie began to believe he might really be stupid. He had not really thought this before; minimal effort in elementary and middle school had been enough for him to coast along, but now what was being asked of him was too much for that to work anymore. He could no longer simply  _ get by _ , but the drive to do better on his own never appeared. Richie kept waiting for something to click and for him to know how to work as hard as Beverly or Stan, but it never arrived. He stood waiting, mind in a different world, while his teachers got angrier and his parents more disappointed.

Eddie came to see Richie at work after school or on weekends, even though Richie worked at a hardware store and there was nothing interesting to see or any good reason for an eighteen year old to hang around the aisles, and the two of them spent his shifts whispering when his manager wasn’t looking. Richie loved his friends, but he liked when it was just him and Eddie. One time, when there was no one in the store to see, Eddie put his hand on Richie’s hip as if it was the most casual thing in the world and that night Richie held a pillow over his head, as if that could muffle his own racing thoughts, screaming silently. 

It was a rough time to be Richie Tozier. Hanukkah started on December the 8th and they visited his mother’s parents in Bangor that Sabbath, a weekend that left him in an inappropriately black mood for the season. His uncle gave him chocolate gelt which did absolutely nothing to make him feel any better; he couldn’t hold back from making a joke about using it to buy a chocolate car and got immediately scolded by his mother for being ungrateful. He spent most of the weekend avoiding his younger cousins and commiserating with Stan on the phone, who was helping his father that week and had heard the blessings for lighting the candles too many times and anyway, Hanukkah wasn’t even a very important holiday, why couldn’t they all just stay home and calm down until Passover. 

Still, he got a hundred dollars from his grandparents, and the car fund was getting somewhere. Richie kept the money inside a shoebox under his bed, wedged underneath some things he kept that were too personal for him to ever want them to be discovered by his parents. It was comforting to sleep knowing the keys to his escape were only a few inches below his head, the confirmation that he was growing ever closer to a point where he could just pack it all up and escape at a moment’s notice the only thing that let him ever truly relax.

He and Beverly shoplifted from the grocery store and nearly got caught, running down the street away from the Hannaford as a security guard yelled at them from the parking lot. Beverly slipped on the ice on the sidewalk and Richie tried to catch her, both of them busting their asses on the concrete, the bottle of beer he had shoved down his jacket exploding all over him and drenching him. He did his best to hide the incriminating evidence when he got home but got immediately caught because he reeked of alcohol. 

“I don’t understand why you’re so determined to ruin your life,” his mother told him, furious to the point where she could only hold her head in her hands.

“It can’t get any worse than it already is,” Richie retorted, which only elicited more anger. 

He didn’t expect his parents to  _ get it _ . It was worse when his friends didn’t. 

“We basically have six months of school left,” Stan said as they were getting out of school for the day. “It’s six months of work and then we get to do whatever we want. I don’t know why you won’t just wait.”

“Or I could just do whatever I want now,” Richie said. 

“Yeah, you keep saying ‘school is fake’ or whatever, but we still have to do it. It would make your life so much easier to play along for like, a little bit more.”

“He has a p-p-point,” Bill said. 

“I go to school every day, don’t I?” Richie said, unlocking his bike from the rack, fingers numb on the cold metal of the bike lock. “How is that not ‘playing along’?” 

“Your parents are probably just on your back so much because they’re worried about you,” Stan said.

“Fuck off,” Richie said. “Just because your life is so perfect.”

“Chill out.”

Richie stared daggers at Stan, who glared back, irritated by Richie’s defensiveness. Richie pulled his bike from the rack and swung a leg over the saddle.

“Whatever. Are we still going to yours tonight?” He asked Bill.

“Yeah, but like… C-c-can you not bring any alcohol?” Bill said.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

The three of them stood there in silence, Richie gripping onto the handles of his bike so tightly the rubber grips left marks on his palms while Stan picked at the wool of his gloves. People around them were struggling around to get to the bike rack, pushing past and sighing when he refused to move, grounded in place by the hot streak of anger inside him.

“You’re… I’m worried about you,” Bill said. “You drink a lot, Rich.”

There was a lump in Richie’s throat. The statement was too earnest, and Bill’s brows were knitted over his eyes, uncaring if anyone saw the vulnerability in his face in that moment. It wasn’t right, for a boy to be so openly worried, for him to admit how he felt about his friend like that. It wasn’t what people did. Richie twisted the handle of his bike, making it click as it went up and down gears. He was suddenly concerned that if he spoke the lump in his throat might burst and then the tears would come, so he didn’t use his own voice. He hid beneath the silly accent and the dumb character instead, where even less of him could be seen.

“Very good, sirrah, tea for two it’ll be,” he said. “Shan’t embarrass the young master with any tomfoolery this night.”

“You’re embarrassing right now,” Bill said, with just enough warmth for the love to make the lump in Richie’s throat grow and throttle him.

He barely said goodbye when he biked away, just left with a casual wave. He rode out to the Kissing Bridge instead of going right home, sat on the fence overlooking the river and sobbed into his hands. After he was finished, eyes raw, he wiped his face with his scarf and felt better. He was catching his breath when he heard the sound of someone walking through the snow and he turned, already scarlet with embarrassment, to see Eddie making his way towards him. Richie thought he should have been melting the snow in the air from the heat of his face alone.

“What are you doing here?” Richie said.

“Hi to you too, asshole,” Eddie said. “I came here to find you, obviously, I’m not on a fucking scenic tour of Derry’s best bridges.”

“How did you know I’d be out here?”

“I’m psychic.” Eddie rolled his eyes. “I  _ know _ you, obviously.” 

Eddie hopped up on the fence next to him, sitting with their legs dangling over the side, perilously high over the river. He didn’t look down at the icy water rushing by them, just kept his eyes firmly on the horizon. His hand crept over to clutch onto the edge of Richie’s coat, anchoring himself a little more securely. Richie shifted so his arm was behind Eddie, as if he was ready to catch him.

Somewhere on the railing below them the letters R + E were carved into the wood. They had been for almost five years now, since one summer when they were all thirteen and the growing certainty inside Richie had become so intense that to not let it out would have resulted in him exploding like a dying star. It had been one small way of making it real. His feelings were real, look at them. Look at how they scar the wood the same way they were scarred into his heart.

“Were you crying?” Eddie said.

Richie bristled.

“No,” he said.

“Ok, sure. Well, if you were, not that you would, I give a shit, ok?” 

“That’s gay.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

Richie grinned and leaned a shoulder into Eddie's a little, so they were supporting each other. He watched the river and Eddie watched the roads in Derry on the horizon for a few moments, swirling snow beginning to settle on their shoulders. It was cold, but Richie didn't care when Eddie was this close to him. He was never cold when Eddie was there because he always seemed to be burning with some intense feeling that felt a little like embarrassment; he didn't know how to describe it, only that he was always hyper-aware of everything Eddie did and the warmth that came from any small touch of skin was enough to make him feel like his entire body was on fire. He didn't know what to call that.

"What are you going to do when you leave Derry?" Eddie said.

"I'm going to be a comedian," Richie said. He had told people this before, but this was the first time he meant it.

"Is it fucked up that I really, really don't want you to go?"

"I'd do anything to get out of this place. It's a fucking hellhole."

“I know. But I’ll miss you.”

Richie tried to think about what it would be like to live without Eddie, to never see him at all. He knew the end times were coming for the whole of the Losers Club; half of the group was going to take to the skies and were swearing blind they’d never return. As much as he hated that everyone in Derry knew him, and though he was alone in some things, Richie had never been  _ lonely _ in his entire life. But running away to the other side of the country was a very lonely thing to do, and so was leaving your best friends behind. The idea he’d be able to find people he loved as much as he did his friends now sounded impossible. 

Stan had once asked them if their parents were still friends with the same people they’d been friends with in middle school and at the time Richie had dismissed it, but now it was weighing on him. Because while his parents had friends, they weren’t friends the same way the Losers Club were. Either this lessening of friendship was a natural part of adulthood or there was something unique about their group, a power in their friendship that couldn’t be found anywhere else in creation. Richie was throwing that away so he could be happy. It felt incredibly selfish at times, like he was letting everyone down. He could not save all of them, though. He could only save himself, and that was asking so much of him already. 

But maybe he could save Eddie.

“I could go with you,” Eddie said.

“You want to come?” Richie said. The idea had not occurred to him before but now it gripped him with a panicked intensity, like he’d realised the beam of light he was looking at was the lamp on a liferaft. 

“Why not? My Mom wouldn’t like it, but…”

“Fuck her! You have to go to college anyway. You can’t live in her basement forever like a fuckin’ troll.”

Eddie looked at Richie and then away, face wavering between hope and fear. His eyes scanned the horizon as if he could find some grain of truth written on the standpipe. Richie could sense that he was struggling to commit, doubts rising internally about what his mother would say, and grabbed Eddie’s shoulder, turning him so they could face each other.

“Listen. We’re young. We’re supposed to do stupid shit and fuck up and have crazy adventures. We can do anything we want to. And I want to get a car and risk everything, and I want you to come with me.”

Eddie tried to search for what to say, unable to really admit what he wanted because it was entwined too much in the terror of what might happen to him if he actually went for it. Richie put his other hand on Eddie’s face, trying to ground him in the moment and tear him out of the anxious fears that were visibly taking over behind those dark, scared eyes. He held onto Eddie tightly, trying to force himself to stop shaking so he would seem braver than he felt.

“Your Mom won’t even let you go to school. You can’t pretend she’s doing shit because she cares about you, Eds. You need to do what  _ you _ want.”

“Where are we even going? New York?” Eddie’s voice was nervous but excited, tentatively reaching for the liferaft, unsure if it was going to drift away in the wind but so, so filled with hope.

“California. LA. Maybe you can go to college there. And I’ll do comedy, and act, and write.”

Eddie had been smiling, shaky and fearfully optimistic, but that smile faded and suddenly there was something silent and true in his eyes. 

“I want to be with you,” Eddie said, the honesty of it as hard and unflinching as the river coursing below them. He leaned forward and for a second Richie thought they might kiss, his heart leaping with hope and joy, but Eddie just pulled him into a hug. 

“If there’s just us, no one can ever tell us to stop,” Richie said, his face buried in the crook of Eddie’s neck. “Or what’s right. We get to decide.”

“I never want to leave you alone,” Eddie said, his breath a warm brush against Richie’s cheek. “You’d probably just do something stupid without me.”

There was an image in his head; Richie in a car with the hood down, driving down a long road, the sun high in the sky over the wide sapphire sea. Eddie sitting in the passenger seat next to him, the wind rippling through his neat hair. They were older, they were strong and young and independent, and they would hold hands as the radio played their favourite songs. He could feel the heat of the sun on his skin and he could feel Eddie’s hand in his; though he knew weren’t possible he could feel the ring around Eddie’s finger under his hand, and his chest clenched with longing. It was a stupid dream. The cold wind over the Derry river was biting at his bare face when he pulled back from Eddie’s shoulder, glasses foggy from the warmth of their embrace and Richie  _ wanted _ . He wanted so badly it was like a fist squeezing his heart, the defenses of his rib cage and breastbone nothing against the strength of the longing inside him. 

_ I love you, I love you, I love you, _ he thought. He wished he could know if Eddie felt the same way -- there was no way to know for sure. He could say the words out loud no more than he could promise Eddie that no one would ever hurt them again, knowing danger still lay out there in the world. The words were a double-edged sword; they brought with them as much fear as they did hope. But as much as Richie might want to banish them from his mind, to pretend he only thought things that were normal and proper, he knew he could not. 

He held Eddie’s hand in his and wished he could be something other than what he was, and knew he never would.

“Will you come with me?” Richie said, but he meant  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ .

“Yes,” Eddie said, but it sounded like  _ I love you, I love you, I love you _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wouldnt celebrate yet
> 
> title is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys
> 
> "Richie's Jewish?" hey check this out. 
> 
> i'm really dedicated to the idea that Richie, while very smart, is not like... good at school. he's really good at stuff he wants to be good at, but it's impossible to get him to care about stuff when he doesn't. undiagnosed adhd solidarity! look if i projected onto Richie like one percent less we wouldn't have a fic at all. 
> 
> [tumblr !](https://saints-row-2.tumblr.com)   
[twitter!](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay)


	6. 1993: so i try to laugh about it/cover it all up with lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for homophobia and homophobic slurs in this chapter

Against all the odds, Henry Bowers had graduated high school mostly on time, a couple of years before any of the Losers Club would. The idea he’d done well on his SATs was laughable, but he was out of school, and so were his awful friends, and that had made things a lot less stressful for the club. The last couple of years without him had been almost peaceful, excusing the occasional scuffle with other, irritating classmates their own age. The amount the Losers saw him had decreased exponentially; three years older than them, Bowers was now twenty-one and while rumour had it he was having trouble holding down a job, he certainly had better things to be doing than hanging around some teenagers. Like back in October there were moments when he saw fit to try and beat the tar out of them, just like old times, but he was mostly hanging around with other adults now, who didn’t really think beating on kids was that cool. Richie was sure Henry would be graduating to a new life of low-level crime soon and would undoubtedly end up in jail by the time he was twenty-four; Bowers was the definition of ‘peaked in high school’, and the peak hadn’t even been that high.

Richie had underestimated how pathetic Bowers was. 

The party was being hosted by Samantha Emerson, who Richie didn’t know because she went to a different school, but who knew Cloe Riggs. And Cloe Riggs said it was fine if Richie came as long as he brought Eddie, because Cloe had kissed Eddie at Richie’s birthday party and had machinations of her own that Richie was choosing to ignore. 

Mike and Bev said they couldn’t go, Ben wouldn’t go without Bev, and Stan and Bill just refused, the two of them flatly telling Richie that they didn’t want to go get drunk with strangers and didn’t understand why Richie did. But Eddie said he would go when Richie asked, even before Richie explained that he was trading Eddie’s friendship for entry. He teased Eddie about Cloe’s apparent crush on him and was silently relieved when Eddie had less than no interest, tossing a fistful of powdery snow at him. 

It was the night school broke up and the freedom was filling Richie with bravado. He stole a bottle of margarita mix from his mother as a gift and made his way to Samantha’s house, walking four or five blocks in ankle-deep snow until he got there. It was already dark out and he was half an hour late, but he figured that would be fine. No one turned up on time to parties. He was expecting Eddie to already be there and ready to vouch for him, but when he showed up some girl he didn’t know answered the door and didn’t have any idea what he was talking about. He shoved the bottle into her hands.

“Cloe invited me. Happy Hanukkah,” he said. 

“Whatever,” was the thoughtful response he got to that, but he was allowed inside the house.

When he got inside, Eddie was nowhere to be found. Richie found Cloe, who was less than impressed that Eddie hadn’t shown up and didn’t particularly want to hang out with Richie. He realised pretty quickly that he didn’t know anyone there more than by sight, and the spark of anxiety erupted inside him. There was a horde of people having a giant shouting conversation in the living room with satellites of smaller groups floating around talking, but Richie didn’t know anyone. He didn’t know how to break into any of the conversations around him; most of the kids were from another school and he found himself stuttering out his lamest jokes ever trying to grab some positive attention. 

He wandered around the house for about fifteen minutes before he gave up and drifted back towards Cloe because she was the only person he knew in the room. She was talking to people that he didn’t and looked unhappy to see him again, frowning deeply when he approached her with a can of beer he’d started chugging and the anxiety inside him surged ferociously again. He started pouring out jokes like a faucet that someone had smashed open, his mouth running at a mile a minute because there was some blind hope that he might suddenly win them all over.

“But don’t you think it’s weird that the Stormtroopers miss all of their shots like do you think that’s the Force? Because otherwise Darth Vader’s elite training must be worse than the shit they teach the Boy Scouts. Like do you think…”

“Richie, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Cloe said, “and I don’t care. I literally only said you could come because all your friends are way cooler than you are.”

Cloe’s other friends were talking about him in hushed voices where he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying but his imagination was enough to fill in the blanks and his ears were burning with embarrassment. He swallowed dryly. 

“Yeah, they are. But like…”

“Go  _ away _ , Tozier.”

He gave up and wandered away. He tried to hang around some other girls he didn’t know and made a passing joke but got frozen out. The idea of trying to approach any of the other boys in the party and talk to them made him feel like he was going to throw up. Was he afraid of men? A little bit. He kept glancing at different guys around the room and found himself becoming increasingly afraid of what might happen if they saw him looking.  _ Would people know _ ? and  _ What have they heard? _ were constant questions in Richie’s mind and right then he was being throttled by them. If someone saw him looking too long then that could be something wrong. They could reverse engineer that look and then  _ know him _ , know what he was thinking, and that fear made his throat close up worse than Eddie having an asthma attack. 

There weren’t a lot of drinks to be found and he was starting to think this was all a huge waste of time and maybe he should leave -- but what if Eddie showed up and he was alone? And Richie had dragged him all the way out here? He felt guilty at the prospect of a crime not yet committed and continued to hover around the edge of the living room, alone, until he clocked that the thing the group of girls opposite were laughing at  _ was  _ him and he retreated, ears burning, into the kitchen next door just for another place to stand. The music on the boombox was shit so he wandered over to see if he could change the tape. He was flicking through the pile of cassettes when a boy standing over by the kitchen island called out to him.

"Hey, don't you go to Derry High?" The boy said. "Rich or something, right?"

"Yeah," Richie said, optimistically, hoping maybe the boy was a friend of a friend and he'd finally found someone to hang around.

The boy was part of a group, with another boy and a couple of girls. They all looked slightly older than Richie, which also made him hopeful, because maybe they'd be cool.

"I heard you're queer. Are you queer?" The boy said. 

Richie stood in shocked silence for half a second, mouth hanging open. The girls laughed and the other boy nudged the one speaking with his elbow, like he was spurring him on.

"No," Richie said. "If I was queer, I wouldn't have fucked your mom the way I did last night."

The girls both gasped and the other boy hit the main kid, whose eyes had narrowed to daggers.

"You think that's fucking funny? I'll tell you what's fucking funny. That  _ everyone _ knows you're a faggot and that  _ everyone _ knows you got caught sucking dick by the fairy bar down by the bus station."

"What the  _ fuck _ are you  _ talking  _ about?"

There was a gay bar by the bus station, Richie was pretty sure, but he'd never been anywhere near it. It represented a kind of final frontier for Richie; the guys who went there were often just  _ passing through _ Derry, which to him seemed frightening in the same way a hitchhiker with a knife did. Unpredictable. He didn't know how to behave around gay men, anyway. He didn't think he'd ever met a gay person, and wouldn’t know what to say if he did.

"Why are you even at this party? No one likes you," one of the girls said, voice snotty. 

"No one likes you either, but you still go wherever you want," Richie said.

She scoffed and was about to say something else when a hand grabbed Richie by the back of his shirt and whipped him around and he was standing face to face -- or face to chin since Richie was considerably taller than him now -- with Henry Bowers. Richie's stomach dropped down somewhere around the Earth's core as he looked at his high school bully. Fucking  _ of course _ Bowers would be hanging around a party with a bunch of high schoolers. Bowers still had a fucking mullet, he obviously wasn't ready to let go of the 80s yet in any regard.

"What the fuck," Henry said, very slowly, all his teeth showing like a shark before it took a chunk out of you, "are you doing here."

"Nothing. I'm leaving. This party fucking blows," Richie said. "There isn't even anything to drink."

Mistake. Mistake. Mistake. Henry grinned, slick and predatory, and every muscle in Richie's body was telling him to run, screaming at him to get the fuck out, but Bowers was still holding onto his shirt and there was a group of people just casually standing in the doorway out of the kitchen. None of them seemed to notice or care that he was wild-eyed with fear, trying his best not to visibly tremble like a fucking baby deer. Jesus Christ, he wished his friends were here. Alone, he was nothing. If any one of them was here he'd have a chance, but right now he was stuck. Alone. With a room full of strangers laughing at him.

“I’ll help you leave,” Henry said. 

Richie didn't even have a chance to think of what he might say in response because Bowers was dragging him out through the door of the kitchen and into the living room, shoving through the crowd with a 'I don't give a fuck about you, this is my show' attitude. Richie tried to pull himself free but he was held fast in a meaty fist and was being yanked out of the front door of the house and into the yard whether he liked it or not. Rubbing salt directly into the wound, people had noticed and were starting to gather in the doorway of the house, standing and staring.

Henry threw Richie on the ground with enough force to wind him, landing awkwardly on one elbow and jarring his whole body. He didn't have a jacket on because it was back inside the fucking house, and it was mid-December in Maine, which meant it was under twenty degrees outside. The grass was damp with frost and slush and soaked through his shirt immediately, making him shiver with revulsion when the wet cloth stuck to his skin. Richie struggled to sit up, trying to push himself upright, when Henry kicked him in the chest.

Richie hit the ground again with a shout of pain, managing to roll out of the way of Henry’s foot stamping down where he’d just been a second before. He scrambled up onto all fours and then when Henry lashed out again Richie managed to catch him by the side of his pant leg and shove him away, taking the slight moment of confusion to get back up again. Bowers just laughed at him as he staggered upright, unfazed by Richie’s weak attempt at defense. He swung a punch, hitting Richie on the shoulder and making him stumble backwards again, slipping on the wet ground but managing not to fall over.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Richie said. “Just leave me alone!”

“You think I’m going to leave you alone? Are you fucking stupid?” Henry said. “You think I’m going to just let you walk around my town doing whatever you want? You think any of us want to have a fucking fairy just walking around?”

“I’m not a faggot!” Richie shouted back. It hurt to say; maybe it was the bruise forming on his ribs, maybe it was the alcohol burning his throat. The words tore out of him like pulling out a tooth, and he could feel the blood it left on his hands.

“Do you think I’m stupid? I saw you and Kaspbrak walking around holding fucking hands. Explain that! Huh! What’s your fucking answer for that? Come on Trashmouth, you ain’t got anything to say?”

Richie didn’t. He had nothing. The house full of people behind him jeered and laughed, their voices mingled taunts that he couldn’t even understand. His ears were ringing with the sound of his own pulse as his heart hammered. All he wanted was to run away; he wanted to be in the clubhouse, sitting in the hammock, in a place that was safe and with people who loved him unconditionally. 

He remembered suddenly that soon he would be losing that too and the wave of grief that hit him was heavier than the fist that struck him in the jaw, snapping his head back and making him reel backwards. He lashed out too, hitting Bowers in the throat with more force than he really realised he had in him. Bowers wheezed with surprise and anger, face turning red with shock. He lunged forward again, but Richie ducked out of the way. He took off across the yard, vaulting over the fence and racing down the sidewalk. People in the house shrieked after him, voices high and laughing, too mixed with the sound of traffic a block over and the wind screaming down the street for it to sound anything other than like the howls of wolves in the hills looking for prey. 

Henry was after him. Richie didn’t even know why. It was such a stupid, pointless thing to do. It was just savagery, plain and simple, the thrill of the hunt. Richie’s feet skidded on the sidewalk, the concrete icy and treacherous, his own home threatening to betray him once again. Henry was only a few feet behind him, a lumbering monster in the dark, shooting through the lights of the scant streetlights like a shark coming through the reef. Richie ran like he’d never ran in his life, but with the inevitability of a nightmare, he couldn’t get away. He tore past a few adults as he ran, but they ducked out of his way instead of trying to help, cars trundling by paying no attention to him until he ran across the road too close for comfort and then their horns shrieked as he streaked past them over the road.

He hit a paving stone and his momentum sent him flying, sprawling over the sidewalk and cracking his nose painfully on the ground. He tried to jump up but someone was already on him; he wheeled backwards, yelling and waving his arms to try and fend off the attacker, but when he reared up to his full height he saw that the person trying to grab onto his jacket was actually Eddie.

“What the hell are you -- Jesus Christ, are you ok?” Eddie said, his eyes wide and filled with fear.

“Where the fuck were you?!” Richie said, his voice high with hysteria. 

“I had to wait until my Mom was asleep to sneak… Are you…” Eddie stumbled over his words, looking genuinely afraid even before Henry Bowers came around the corner like a rocket and nearly slammed directly into them. “Oh, fuck!”

Eddie grabbed Richie by the sleeve and then they were running again, back towards Eddie’s house, which was closer than Richie’s. They turned sharp down an alley, tripping over garbage and debris that had been left to rot in the backstreet. As they ran, they heard Bowers put his foot through something wooden and yell with disgust, caught on some crate that the two of them had managed to avoid. They took advantage of the delay, taking off down a different shortcut and leaving no trace of themselves behind as they raced down the street. When Richie slipped, Eddie caught him, making sure he didn’t fall.

They crashed into Eddie’s backyard about ten minutes later, coming to a staggering stop and falling over themselves, almost collapsing onto the grass. Richie, freezing cold and soaking wet, was shaking like a stray dog and Eddie dragged him into the back of his house, into the kitchen and sat him at the table, his own hands trembling as he grabbed a towel out of the laundry to drape over Richie’s shoulders like a trauma blanket. The kitchen was dark, but it had the same layout that it had always had and Richie probably could have found his way around in his sleep, even if he hadn’t been in the house in over two years. In the dark, the only light was the street lamp outside, and it made everything in the room a ghostly half-yellow, huge shadows from the clean dishes in the drying rack forming bars over Richie’s face as he sat at the table. 

Sitting down, Richie’s hands were shaking so hard he couldn’t even hold onto the towel Eddie had placed over him. He was breathing in short, sharp bursts, unable to catch his breath properly. Eddie tried to ruffle his hair a little drier with the towel but Richie just slapped his hands away, the towel drifting off him uselessly.

“What happened?” Eddie whispered. 

Richie took a deep breath that hurt his lungs and throat, and burst into explosive, traumatic tears. Like something had snapped and unleashed the banks of an overflowing river into the town below, he started sobbing, shoulders shaking with the force of it. Eddie looked completely lost at sea, but he tried valiantly to wipe Richie’s face, clutching at him desperately even when Richie tried to shove him away, refusing to let Eddie get too close.

“Where were you?” Richie sobbed, unable to moderate his tone, voice a howl in the night.

“Shh! My mom will kill us if she wakes up!” Eddie said.

“I don’t fucking care! I only went to that stupid fucking party to be with you, and you didn’t show!”

“I’m  _ sorry _ , I had to wait for my mom to go to sleep.”

“I can’t fucking do this. I can’t fucking do this.”

“D-do what?”

“Bowers was after me ‘cus I’m… Cus he knows I’m…” Richie couldn’t bring himself to say it, but he didn’t need to. The force of the sob he let out after that said enough. 

“It’s my fault,” Eddie said, hollowly. 

“What the fuck do you  _ mean _ ?”

“If Henry hadn’t seen us holding hands that one time you wouldn’t’ve put a brick through his fucking window, and that was  _ my  _ idea. This is  _ my  _ fault.”

Eddie was tearing up too, his vast eyes shining in the dim light, but that just made Richie feel a million times worse. He fucking hated seeing Eddie cry. It felt like getting a rock to the skull in a time when he was already on the verge of death, his stomach aching from how hard he was crying.

“I can’t do this,” Richie said. “It’s not your fault, it’s this fucking place! It’s this fucking town! I only went to that party to be with you and everyone fucking… Everyone knows, and they’re going to fucking kill me. I can’t do this. I can’t be the town queer. I just want… I just want…”

He buried his face in his hands and bawled, his eyes burning with tears, his throat raw from crying and screaming. Eddie was crying too, too scared and lost to know what he should say, just shaking where he sat, his chair drawn up to Richie’s so close their knees were touching, his hands twisting over and over like worried dogs at play. 

“I’m not doing this anymore,” Richie said, his voice a rasp and a whine. “I went there to be with you.”

“You don’t want to be with me.”

“Not like that. Not here. We can’t. This fucking town is -- they’re fucking werewolves. They’re werewolves, and they’re going to kill me. I can’t… I can’t…” 

“But I want… I thought…”

“We  _ can’t _ !” Richie said, his voice so full of fear he sounded almost angry. “They’re going to fucking kill me, don’t you get it? I can’t do it. It’s too hard I can’t… I don’t want to live like this!”

“We’re not gonna, we’re gonna leave, we’re…”

“We’re not  _ anything _ !” 

Eddie tried to say something but his bottom lip was trembling and he involuntarily let out a whimper, words failing him in a place where only raw feeling could explain what he meant, tears rolling down his cheeks. He made a sad little gasping noise, like someone trying desperately to breathe when their lungs were giving out, and then the light in the kitchen came on.

Sonia Kaspbrak was standing in her nightgown and robe, a look of thunderous anger on her face as she stared at the two teenagers wailing in her kitchen at eleven o’clock at night. Eddie was already pale as a ghost, and Richie had a rapidly swelling black eye and a face so awash in tears he could have been the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing his mother suddenly appear just made Eddie cry harder, as if the shock was too much for him to handle, or maybe out of some innate hunger for comfort despite knowing it would never really come. Richie didn’t know what the fuck he could say or do; he just looked at Mrs Kaspbrak and sobbed.

Sonia Kaspbrak drove Richie home, sitting in the driver’s seat of her car and seething with so much barely concealed resentment that Richie was surprised she didn’t crash the car on purpose. She managed not to say a word to him the entire drive home, just let him sit and snivel in the passenger seat, feeling more and more like a worm, until they arrived at his house and he crawled out of her car before she marched him up to the front door. When his parents answered, she told them in no uncertain terms that if she ever saw him hanging around her house again she would call the police, and regaled them with the stories of all the time Eddie had come home reeking of beer, all because of Richie Tozier.

Too stricken with shock to really say anything, Richie’s parents had allowed him to go up to his room, where he had collapsed onto the bed, too exhausted to say a single thing more. He stayed in bed for the next day, ignoring anyone’s attempts to speak to him or his friends showing up at the door. He only moved to take down the photograph of him and Eddie falling, shoving it into the back of a drawer where he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

December lasted a couple more weeks and then petered out, bringing 1993 to a quiet end, dying as 1994 rolled in, carrying with it the horrible inevitability of the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Boys Don't Cry by The Cure
> 
> speaking as a gay man who grew up in a small town one of the worst things about small towns is that people just like... know you. you'll have never seen someone before in your life but you're in classes with their cousin or something so they know all about you, and they're telling other people too. it's really one of the most terrifying parts of living in a small town; you have no anonymity and no control over your reputation spreading. it's scary as fuck, and really encourages you to try and hide yourself or to change your image... 
> 
> [check out my short, super sweet new Bill/Mike one-shot!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21601330)


	7. 1994: bigmouth strikes again/and i've got no right to take my place/with the human race

It was the beginning of the end. There were less than five months left in school, then the short final summer and then… 

January crawled by. The month, in Richie's memory, was snow. Snow on the ground, snow in the sky, turning it white and textureless, snow like the static between channels. Nothing stuck to him; he was the ice on the river, floating by on the freezing waters. He went to school, he hung out with his friends, he sometimes did his homework, he studied occasionally for his exams. He went to work.

At the end of January he got his car. Richie had spotted it for sale at the Robertsons' house, down the road from Bill. The Robertsons' kid Charlie was selling it before he went into the military. It was old and beat-up looking, but it ran really well, and it was a crisp, flashy red, and it was Richie's. He handed over the money with a sense of pride, having set out to do something and actually achieved it. Richie drove the car home that day, but did spend a good long time sitting by the Kissing Bridge with the engine idling, thinking about what it would be like to just drive over it and flee, be gone, leave the town and never go back.

One day.

Stan sarcastically called the car 'Red Rocket', which had the others screaming with laughter and led to the car then, and forevermore, being known as The Dickmobile. When asked, with tears in her eyes from laughter, Beverly would explain it was called that because:

"It's small, goes hard and fast, and it'll get you where you're going."

She and Richie found this funnier than everyone else, and threatened frequently to get matching tattoos, something they were the most certain of only when it was the most annoying. The person who found this the most annoying, and viewed Richie and Beverly’s relationship with thinly-veiled suspicion, as if the years of platonic friendship between the two of them might suddenly, impossibly transform into something else without warning, was Ruth Byrd. Ruth swore blind she didn’t have anything in particular against Beverly -- and it was true that she treated all of the Losers with an awkwardness that bordered on being rude -- but it was clear she didn’t believe that boys and girls could be ‘just friends’ and that conviction fed into her dislike of Richie and Beverly’s closeness. 

None of the Losers liked her. Bill, Ben and Mike were politely uneasy, conversations between them long, aching silences where the three of them would eye Richie in a plea for the uncomfortable moment to end. Stan, Beverly and Eddie were all less willing to be charming, their irritation shining through frequently, particularly Stan and Eddie, who saw absolutely no reason why they needed to put up with Ruth’s inability, or perhaps willful refusal, to fit into the group. Eddie hated her. No, hate wasn’t the right word. To Eddie, she was a used band-aid, the water in the sink after someone washed their hands, the lid of the garbage can. The by-product of something used to keep you clean and safe. The days when Richie ate lunch with Ruth, Eddie would simply up and vanish, as if staying clear of a quarantine. On days when Richie went to her basketball games or went with her to the cinema, or went to her house instead of anyone else’s, Eddie would make other plans to be somewhere else, doing something else, keeping busy. Richie thought it was spiteful. It made the others oddly sad.

Richie liked her. She laughed at his jokes and made him laugh, and she invited him to parties with her. Ruth was fairly popular, which meant  _ he  _ was fairly popular, and people gave him less shit when she was under his arm. She liked the same music as him, and he didn’t mind watching her basketball games, even if he wasn’t good at sports. He drove her to the big record store in Bangor and they spent a day crawling through the stacks of CDs and tapes, sharing and discussing bands they liked. It was nice. It was fun. Ruth was generally nice. He had a good time with her. Plus, they were  _ eighteen _ . 

It didn’t really matter if he had a girlfriend. It was just something to do, like rewatch a movie he’d seen before, or bike in circles around the park. Something safe and neutral. No, he didn’t love her. He didn’t need to love her. They were eighteen and it was February, a few months before everything was over. He’d asked her out because she sat two rows away from him in chemistry and still thought he’d been hitting on her on Halloween, when he’d said she looked like a model. She’d said yes because she was bored, so he took her to see  _ Ace Ventura: Pet Detective _ and they’d liked it, and that was it. It was that easy. It was so fucking laughably easy he didn't know why he hadn't done it years ago.

* * *

Eddie thought it mattered a lot. He'd looked shellshocked when he'd heard that Richie was going on a date with her, and didn't lose that state of surprise for the week that followed. Then he realised that Ruth wasn't going away and the shock turned into spite. Richie valiantly tried to introduce Ruth to his friends, but all of them were standoffish or cold and after the second time he tried to get them to hang out as a big group of eight he decided it wasn't worth it. Ruth's friends accepted him without much comment, though he didn't particularly like any of them that much. They were all kind of… Boring. He never found he had anything much to say to them, standing around in parking lots and hanging out at the diner picking at a plate of fries, finding that Ruth was the only one of them who laughed at his jokes. He did often think that he'd rather be back with the Losers, where he belonged, but he wanted to belong to  _ more _ than just them. Greed, maybe. Hubris.

Eddie really thought it mattered. He didn't have a lot of classes with Richie anymore, because Eddie took extra and AP everything, but he still saw Eddie in homeroom. For the past seven years Eddie had sat next to him; the desks they had occupied in every homeroom class bore enough graffiti to prove it. Now Eddie sat on the other side of the room, near the window, and wouldn't answer when Richie insistently tried to whisper-shout to him, only stopping when the teacher told him to keep it down. 

He waited until after school to confront Eddie; he was scared of doing it at lunchtime, didn’t want other people to risk hearing. He sensed immediately that Eddie might say something neither of them wanted other people to hear, and that drove him to do it in private. He chased Eddie down, running after him over the field behind the school they sometimes took a shortcut through, back in the days before Richie could just drive to school and back. Eddie didn’t look all that happy to see Richie after him, glaring over his shoulder.

“Why are you avoiding me?” Richie said.

“You’re busy,” Eddie said.

“Oh, my God. Is this all because you don’t like Ruth?”

“I don’t give a fuck about Ruth.”

“Then why are you so mad?” 

“You’re so fucking stupid.”

Eddie’s breath was coming out in hot little puffs, small clouds floating in the frosty air, his skin burned pink from cold despite the layers and layers of scarves he was buried in. He glowered out at Richie from under a beanie pulled low over his brows, as if he was trying to hide himself from the world. Richie shivered in his worn wool coat, the wet snow seeping through the hems of his jeans. The field around them seemed like a vast desert of snow, nothing but the black, leafless trees on the horizon and the brown-brick school at their backs. They were stranded in an inhospitable place, and the comfort they normally got from each other wouldn’t be enough this time.

“Why are you being such a dick?” Richie said.

“Fuck off,” Eddie said. He strode away through the snow, and Richie didn’t follow him.

* * *

Stan called Richie to invite him over, where the others would be, but Ruth had already asked him to meet her at the diner they always hung out at. Stan sighed heavily over the phone, his breath crackling on the receiver.

“ _ What _ ?” Richie said.

“I dunno, Rich,” Stan said. “Why do you like her so much?”

“She’s nice,” Richie said.

“Oh, great.”

“What? Why did you date Sally? Cus she was a bitch?”

“Don’t call her a bitch.”

“I wasn’t -- that wasn’t what I was saying.”

“Whatever. See you at school, I guess.”

Richie felt like he was on the outside and everyone knew something he didn’t, and that scared him. He didn’t like being the only one who didn’t know the joke -- though to be fair to his friends, they weren’t laughing much either. He still dragged Ruth over to sit with them at lunch that day, despite the fact even Ruth didn’t want to, insistent that this time they’d be able to all get on. Eddie, predictably, vanished. Beverly, Bill, Ben, and Stan all sat and tried to make the best of it, but the long, awkward silences hung in the air and Richie felt like he was suffocating under them. He talked non-stop to try and fill up others gaps in speech, but none of his friends or Ruth really knew what to say.

“The… Weather… Sucks… Lots of snow,” Ben offered at one point.

“I like snow,” Ruth said, absently.

“Uh, sure.”

They sat there and all stared at each other until the bell rang for the end of lunch, and Ruth quietly asked Richie not to make her sit with his friends again. He decided then he wouldn’t. If they were going to be jerks for no reason, he wasn’t going to put up with it. It was on them.

So he stopped sitting with them at lunch, and he stopped hanging out with them after school. He went to work, he went out with Ruth, he hung out with Ruth’s friends. He got so drunk at a party he blacked out, and then he did it again the next week. He flunked Spanish, found something invigorating about the failure, about the fact he was already so far gone with something that there was no saving him now. He wondered if he’d actually graduate at all, or if he’d be doing his GED when he was thirty and out of work. He smoked a lot of cigarettes and didn’t talk to Ruth about it.

February was cold, and lonely. Richie spent every day with other people, almost insistently, making himself annoying and knowing he was annoying because he wanted to not be alone. But it didn’t matter if he hung out with people all day; the first few weeks of February he found himself constantly standing in a room full of people with his arm around his girlfriend, staring into space and feeling like he was the only person in the world who didn’t feel anything at all. He knew they talked about him behind his back; he came back into the room after leaving for the bathroom and the conversation stopped suddenly, people’s eyes looking at him and then away, quickly, someone bringing up something entirely new. More than once he heard the same question, from people incredulous.

“I thought he was… Y’know?” 

It was almost never said with actual malice, just with curiosity, like it was a simple point they wanted clarification on. When did you say the match was? Where do you work? Isn’t Richie Tozier a homo? 

* * *

Richie didn’t feel anything, and then he felt mad. Eddie sat on the other side of the room in homeroom and didn’t talk to him. None of the Losers came over to talk to him at lunch, though sometimes he’d turn around when he sat at Ruth’s table and see Beverly or Stan staring at him sadly, so he started leaving school at lunch even though that was against the rules. He usually came back for afternoon classes. Someone wrote  _ Rich Tozier sucks fat cocks _ on the wall of the boy’s toilets and he scratched it out with his car keys. He made up a joke in his head about over-fed chicken but had no one to tell it to. 

He found himself watching Eddie every day in class. His photograph of them was still in the back of his drawer. He had others up on the wall because there were too many to take down but he hid  _ that _ one, because it hurt worse to look at, stung more to remember. The image of them falling together, limbs and bodies fading in and out, inseparable and impossible to divide, haunted him. He dreamt about it sometimes.

At first he just kept ignoring Eddie, the same way he’d been ignoring the other Losers for the last couple of weeks. But then he started shoulder-bumping Eddie on the way out of class in the morning, which was deeply unfair because that point Richie was over six feet and half a foot taller than Eddie, who was still hoping for one last growth spurt. The first time it happened Eddie looked confused, the second time he looked pissed off, and the third time he punched Richie directly in the lower back. The punch took Richie by surprise and he didn’t swing back at Eddie, just shoved him again ineffectually, Eddie already walking away in the opposite direction.

Beverly caught him after school after the third day, running after him when he was going to his car.

“Stop being such a bitch to Eddie,” she shouted at him as he was struggling to find his keys in his rucksack, which always looked like someone had upended a garbage can in it.

“What?” He said. “He started it, he told me to fuck off. He won’t tell me what’s going on!”

“He says you  _ know _ , but he won’t tell  _ us _ . But you really hurt him, Richie, whatever you did.”

Beverly was so filled with assurance of the hurt without knowing the story that Richie wanted to tear himself apart at the unfairness of it all. She didn’t know --  _ couldn’t _ know -- the full story, or understand it. Richie couldn’t give his side of it; he’d die first, die if he tried to express what he thought was going on with him. But they knew, anyway, didn’t they? Knew something, at least. Knew enough to see that something was up with Richie and to question everything about his relationship. He thought about the graffiti on the bathroom wall and wanted to get out of the school parking lot as fast as possible.

“Mind your own business, ok?” Richie said.

“If two of my friends are being this weird and hurt then it  _ is _ my business,” Beverly snapped. 

“Yeah? None of us bother you about you and Ben. You know you’re in love but both of you just sit around pretending it’s not happening.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Beverly said. “You can’t just say whatever you want because you’re pissed off.”

“How are you any different? Leave me alone.”

She threw up her arms in disbelief but Richie climbed into the car before she could say anything else, keeping his eyes fixed on the road as he pulled out of the parking lot. He tried not to go too fast when he left, but there was a residual burning sense of shame that made his foot too heavy on the gas. He knew why he was so desperate to get out of there, and the knowing made it worse.

* * *

“Are we ever gonna like, have sex?” Ruth said. 

“What?” Richie said, looking at her with eyes like saucers. 

She was lying on her bed while he sat on the floor, playing with her dog while she worked on the homework he’d allegedly come over to ‘help’ with, a lie that was intended to keep her parents off their backs, but that really didn’t convince anyone in the room. It didn’t matter that much, really. They’d made out for about thirty seconds before Richie got distracted by Ruth’s elderly and very sweet sheepdog, who threw itself on the floor in anticipation of bellyrubs, and Richie had spent so much time petting it that Ruth had actually moved onto the classwork they’d been intending to ignore. She was reclining now, chin propped up on her elbow, studying Richie curiously but with a kind of objective detachment that made him feel like he was being surveyed.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to. I know you’re Jewish and I don’t know if that means you’re like, not allowed to? But you joke about it all the time so I just figured…” Ruth let the sentence trail off. 

Richie couldn’t look at her. He stared very intently at his sneakers, at the blurry smudge that had once been graffiti lovingly drawn on the rubber sole by Eddie, in sharpie. They had said KICKMASTER, which didn’t mean anything, and never would, if you hadn’t been there at the time, with both Eddie and Richie laughing themselves sick over the stupid joke that could never be reccounted to anyone else without losing all its luster. 

“I, uh, I dunno,” Richie said. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

He hadn’t. 

“Ok,” Ruth said. She flicked to the next page of her textbook. 

* * *

Richie took Ruth to see  _ Reality Bites,  _ which was meant to be a romcom, but when they got to the bit about a character being scared she might have HIV, Richie stopped finding it funny or romantic. When the gay man in the film talked about not being able to come out because of his parents, Richie found he couldn’t breathe. He sat paralysed in the seat next to Ruth, who watched the film without much real interest, the back of his neck prickling with sweat. He found himself so tense he could barely move, and when the gay character decided to come out and start dating, Richie felt so sick he couldn’t stand watching the film anymore. He stood up quickly, almost tipping over his popcorn, making his way out of the theatre. Ruth didn’t follow, probably bcs he mumbled  _ TOILET  _ way too loudly and embarrassed both of them. 

He stumbled out into the hallway outside and leaned against the wall, gasping for air. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a movie with a gay character before, not one that wasn’t a one-scene joke. He could deal with those; when they were just jokes, they weren’t humans. He didn’t have to worry about being able to relate to them when they were jokes, because he knew he wasn’t like them, he was a real person. This… Was something else.

Richie was making his way to the lobby to try and get a drink to help settle his nerves when he saw the other Losers walking into the theatre, led by Eddie. They all noticed him immediately, staring in uncomfortable silence as he stared back, his mouth open, his stomach churning. He had never wanted the people he loved most in his life to fall through the Earth and not be standing in front of him more than he did right then.

“Are you ok?” Ben said, noticing that Richie looked distinctly peaky.

“Yeah,” Richie said, voice strangled.

“Leave it, he doesn’t want to see us,” Eddie said. 

Eddie’s quiet, almost mournful tone made Richie flinch. He didn’t want it to be true that he’d hurt anyone. He didn’t like it. Richie was often characterised as an asshole, but he didn’t actually get anything out of hurting anyone. Pissing them off for a joke was one thing, but there was a genuine pain in Eddie’s voice that made him feel guilt like being dunked in oil, slimy and unable to wash the traces of it off himself easily. It clung to him as he stood there, sick and bitter and lonely and aching.

“It didn’t have to be like this,” Richie said, “ _ you _ were the one who kept being a dick to Ruth. All of you.”

“We w-w-weren’t trying to be dicks to her, Richie, it’s j-just weird,” Bill said. “We don’t  _ know  _ her.”

“Yeah,” Beverly said. “You chose her over us.”

“You made me choose!”

“You’re being weird!” Stan said. “You’re acting like a total stranger!”

“I don’t have to tell you guys everything,” Richie said. “You just… Don’t want to know my side.”

“I know your side, and you’re being an asshole,” Eddie said.

“Fuck you! What do you want from me? I’m supposed to live my whole life by myself? People have girlfriends, Eddie. I’m being normal, ok? It’s not my fault you’re being a freak.”

“ _ Fuck  _ you!” Eddie was red-faced, overwhelmed. 

“That’s so fucked up, Richie,” Beverly said. 

Other people were staring at the seven of them as they stood around, six of them staring down Richie, who felt more alone than he’d ever felt, who felt like he was standing in front of the firing squad and they were blowing apart the fragile, paper-thin new identity he’d built over himself. It didn’t convince them, which maybe he could have lived with, but it didn’t convince anyone else either. There was something so casual about the way Danielle Waters, one of Ruth’s friends, had eyed Richie the first time he was introduced as her boyfriend. So absent of malice, and yet the question still made him feel like he was getting kicked to the ground in a yard of strangers baying for his blood. 

Isn’t Richie Tozier… Y’know?

He scratched the graffiti off the wall with his car keys, but he couldn’t scratch it off his reputation.

“You guys don’t  _ know _ me, ok. I don’t have to be what you think of me,” Richie said.

“Yeah, I used to think you were my f-f-friend,” Bill said.

Richie’s hands were clenched into such tight fists they were shaking with the force of it, nails digging into his skin. He was pale and sweating under his shirt as if he’d been forced to run a mile, unable to calm down, already high-strung from the movie and now on the verge of passing out from the bitterness swelling inside him.

“What’s going on?”

Ruth was at his elbow, glancing between him and the others with a confused look on her face. Eddie made a noise somewhere between a snarl and a laugh and stormed off towards the men’s room. Richie just looked at her and back at his other friends, all of them furious. Mike and Ben started after Eddie, the others just stayed in a wall of judgement that may have been semi-projected but made Richie want to puke. 

“Nothing. Let’s go,” Richie said.

He left without waiting, storming past Beverly and Stan without meeting their eyes, almost running out into the street. Ruth trailed after him, her arms folded tightly in a way that looked overly defensive. Richie kept walking when he got out, not heading anywhere in particular just walking down the street, heading away from the theatre as fast as he could, vaguely away from the town centre. Ruth had to call after him three or four times to get him to stop. He did eventually, coming to a halt by the drugstore and standing with his hands shoved into his pockets and shoulders hunched, waiting for her to catch up to him.

“I heard you arguing with them,” Ruth said.

“They’re assholes,” Richie said.

“It kinda feels like you’re just dating me because you’re mad at them,” Ruth said.

“That’s not true!”

Ruth shrugged. She had a lot of freckles and they formed different constellations when she wrinkled her nose, unconvinced.

“I think you’re ok, Richie,” she said. “But like, I don’t know if I want to be in the middle of whatever this is.”

“Are you breaking up with me?”

“Why were you dating me?”

“You’re nice.”

“Why are you best friends with Beverly?”

“That’s not… That’s not fair. I’ve known Bev forever. This isn’t even  _ about _ her.”

Ruth shrugged again. 

“I don’t know what it’s about. I just know it’s not about me. I think maybe my relationships should be about me, a little.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, because it really wasn’t about her. It never had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is Bigmouth Strikes Again by The Smiths 
> 
> my other fic Not Quite Young will be ending soon! which is why this one was delayed, i got caught up in writing the end of that. 
> 
> Richie is going through ... some stuff ... I hope it's clear Ruth is a smokescreen and not that Richie is actually into girls. I'm writing him gay here. I also don't want Ruth to come across as an antagonist or obstacle; she's just kind of a teenager who thought a guy was nice and got weaponised by Richie to try and defend himself against perception. which didn't work, for better or for worse.


	8. 1994: if bein' wrong's a crime, i'm serving forever

Richie thought about not talking to any of them ever again. He thought about not talking to any of them ever again the whole time he was driving to Eddie’s house at almost midnight on February 28th, the day after the theater. He’d managed to hold off a little over twenty-four hours, but it had consumed him like a fire eating through an abandoned house. No matter what he tried to distract himself with, Eddie and the others were back in his mind after not too long. He kept turning what he’d say in his mind over and over, thinking through what Eddie might say, trying to guess the exact way he’d say it, the look on his face. It was a stupid, pointless game, and the only way to make it quiet was to see what would happen in real life.

Which was why he was back in Eddie’s backyard, tossing snowballs made out of the slushy remains of the snow, more like shards of dirty ice, at Eddie’s window. They would hit the glass with unsatisfying  _ splats _ , and he threw four or five before  _ eventually _ , Eddie stuck his head out of the window. Richie considered throwing another, but it didn’t feel appropriate, so he just brushed the last of the snow off his hands.

“We need to talk,” Richie said.

“Fuck off,” Eddie said.

“I know where you keep the spare key, I’m coming up there.”

“Hey! No!”

Richie knew the Kaspbraks had a spare key in the bottom of the flowerpot by the doorway and he tipped it over to shake the key out, just as he’d seen Eddie do a hundred times before, or had done himself when he was a kid, letting himself in to see Eddie after school, back in the days before Mrs Kaspbrak’s patience for him had evaporated. He was scrabbling to unlock the door when it was yanked open. He briefly worried it might be Mrs Kaspbrak, but it was Eddie. Eddie was in tartan pyjamas that were a size too small, and he looked mad as hell. Richie thought he might have actually woken him up, but decided he didn’t care.

“You are the most annoying person in the fucking world, do you know that?” Eddie said.

He let Richie in, though, the two of them sneaking upstairs to his room. The threat of waking up Mrs Kaspbrak was obviously enormous, but they were both managing to keep their voices down this time. Eddie gingerly closed the door behind him. His room was pretty neat, for a teenage boy. Some dirty clothes over the back of a chair, books and homework roughly piled on his desk, large _ Die Hard _ poster on his wall hanging at an angle. There were more old toys around than you’d probably expect from your average eighteen year old, but Richie figured that was more Sonia’s fault than Eddie’s. He couldn’t let go of his childhood if he wanted to.

Richie stood by the desk while Eddie sat on the bed, arms folded over his chest like he wasn’t really mad, just disappointed.

“Ruth broke up with me,” Richie hissed, quiet enough that no one else would hear but Eddie. “Because we had a stupid fight. So, it’s basically your fault.”

“It’s probably your fault for being weird and gross all the time,” Eddie said, keeping his voice low. 

“I’m not weird or gross. You’re the one acting like a weirdo.”

“Yeah, well, you’re being a shitty friend.”

“You guys hated Ruth from the start…”

“I don’t give a  _ fuck _ about Ruth. I give a fuck because you’re doing like, everything you can to be somebody else. And for some reason that means you have to fuck over all of us.”

“I’m not trying to fuck you over. If I’m trying to be ‘be someone else’ you should just like… Deal with it.”

“No.”

Richie sat down on the desk, which Eddie frowned at but didn’t comment on. 

“Don’t know what to tell you man, I just thought I’d get laid for once.”

Eddie glared at him. Richie tried to laugh about it but was met with silence and rammed his hands into his pockets instead. The tone in the room was of bitter, moody silence, the kind where they both knew the other had more to say and wasn’t saying it. Every time Richie tried to think of something to say his throat got tight like it was being throttled closed by the part of him that didn’t want him to be honest, gritting his teeth and digging his fingernails into the soft wood of Eddie’s desk. There would be fingernail marks on the underside for a long time to come.

“I told you. I can’t be me anymore,” Richie said softly. 

“You have to be,” Eddie said. “I’d miss you too much.”

“You’re making me feel like a fuckin’ idiot for not wanting to be a loser anymore.”

“Yeah, well, you are an idiot.  _ And _ a loser.”

“You know sometimes I just want to kill you like, so bad.”

“Feeling’s mutual, asshole.” Eddie was working himself up to saying something, his perpetually worried mouth pressed into a frustrated line as he tried to build himself up to saying whatever he was thinking. “You said we’d leave together.”

Richie was digging his nails deeper into the desk, his shoulders so tense it hurt.

“We can still do that,” he said. “We don’t have to be together all the time, every day. I mean, it’s weird. People were going to start thinking we’re dating.”

The words hung heavy in the air, the implication obvious. 

“So you  _ do  _ think it’s my fault,” Eddie said, voice low and thick with hurt, betrayal written all over him. 

“No. Fucking  _ hell _ , Eds. I thought for a little while maybe everyone in the town wasn’t going to beat the shit out of me, alright? Is that so fuckin’ bad?”

“You don’t have to fuck me over to make everyone else happy!”

“Why do you care so much?”

Eddie grabbed the pillow off his bed and threw it at him; it hit Richie in the head with enough force to nearly hurt, and bounced off onto the floor. Richie snatched it off the ground in preparation to smack Eddie in the face with it as hard as he could when he noticed a glossy piece of paper on the bed underneath where the pillow had been and froze dead in his tracks.

It was a photograph. It was mostly dark green and grey, the colours of the rock walls that made up most of the backdrop, covered in wild trees, but in the centre was the twisting shape of two figures in bright cream-peach; they were moving as they fell through the air, the only things in motion in the photo and leaving a brilliant chaotic trail where they had been. It was almost impossible to tell where one of them began and the other ended, falling together towards the still green waters as one.

Richie dropped the pillow and reached out to pick the photograph up, Eddie watching him with an increasingly bashful expression, his ears burning pink. Richie’s fingers were trembling a little as he picked it up. For a brief, absurd second he thought that maybe Eddie had somehow stolen the photograph he had at home, imprisoned at the back of his drawer, but this was clearly a different copy, bearing folds and creases, and the wear and tear of something well-loved.

“Where did you get this?” Richie said.

“Stan,” Eddie said. “It’s us.”

“I know. I have the same one by my bed.”

Eddie smiled a little bit and Richie found himself tearing up. He swallowed back down on that but seeing the photograph there, right under Eddie’s pillow, in a place that was secret and safe, made his heart ache. It reminded him of being on the bridge again, how in that moment every part of him screamed  _ I love you _ even when neither of them were saying it. The love felt implied, an axe hanging in the air waiting to drop on them both. The fear of the damage it would do when it finally fell was the only thing stopping Richie from saying it; he could exist in the tenuous state of knowing and saying nothing forever, because they were safe as long as he stayed within the thin protection of denial.

Richie sat down on the bed beside Eddie, still holding the photograph. He placed it very gingerly down where he had found it, as if he was scared it would suddenly vanish and leave him with no reminder. Eddie watched him with those huge eyes, brows low. His breath was slow but every now and again it would hitch as he looked at Richie, waiting to see what he would do. He glanced at his inhaler on the bedside table, but didn’t touch it.

Richie reached out to slip his hand into Eddie's. Eddie gripped it immediately; despite the anger of the last few weeks there was the instinct to comfort each other. As cold and prickly as Eddie could be, he had always that strong need to help people, in his own way, that made something inside Richie pang painfully. He was always looking out for everyone; his rants about safety, his fear and anxiety about hurting themselves, it was all just his urge to protect. Eddie loved his friends. Eddie loved Richie.

He wanted to tell Eddie how scared he was. Everything scared him; staying or leaving, the idea of either gripped him with fear. But staying felt like a death sentence in a way that leaving did not. One way or the other, he would not live like this forever, and leaving felt like the better option. There had to be a world he could live in, out there, there  _ had  _ to be a home he could build. He needed to believe, deep down in his heart, that somewhere there was a home for Richie Tozier. He wished that home could be Eddie.

“I just feel like I’m letting all you guys down,” Richie said. “You hear all the shit they say about me.”

“They say shit about all of us, none of us believe it,” Eddie said. “They’re always calling me a cripple, or Bev a slut, or Bill r…”

“Those things are different because they’re not true.”

“And the things they say about you are?”

Richie stared at him, clenching his jaw with tension, hand squeezing Eddie’s so tight it nearly hurt, not that Eddie complained. 

“I don’t even know what being gay means,” Richie said.

“I guess that you have sex with guys. I don’t know. I’m not gay.”

“I know,” Richie said, even though he didn’t, and it was oddly painful to hear Eddie say it. “But I  _ don’t  _ do that. Thinking about it freaks me out, kinda, so maybe I’m… Maybe I’m not.”

“Like what makes…  _ You  _ think… You’re gay?” Eddie chose his words carefully, dodging around them like he was afraid of saying the wrong thing but also didn’t know what the right thing was. 

“Sometimes I like…” 

Sometimes ever since he was a child he would look at other boys and see something, something indefinable, that would make a part of him feel so suddenly alone, and he was able only in those moments to recognise the loneliness because he was being faced with the chance it might end. That there had been an immutable sense of loneliness hanging over his entire life, a knowledge hardwired into his brain that he was not like the others. That since he was six or seven he would see news stories about gay people dying and hear the indifference of the anchors and a feeling of fear and shame would blossom inside him; he was both afraid but unable to look away at the same time, seeing a pattern in front of his eyes and transfixed by the desire to decipher what it was, even when the looking grew exhausting and painful. That when he was nine he had heard his father, his well-meaning but oblivious father who did not even like to raise his voice, refer to another man at work as being ‘a lonely old queer’, almost so casually it was hard to believe he had intended it to be offensive, and it had rooted Richie to his chair with anxiety so intense he could not finish his food. Richie had not known then who he was, but the seeds of it were already inside him, and for most of his life it had felt like his body was being taken over by something poisonous; he pictured _ it  _ like poison ivy, growing fast and thick and suffocating everything else inside him so all people would see when they looked were the vines of ivy. And poison ivy was, of course, something people wanted to destroy. It was like, without his consent or control, Richie had been forced to watch his own identity turn against him; he could beg and plead, but he could not stop himself from becoming something that he had been taught was a death sentence. 

And sometimes there were times, like when Eddie’s hand lingered on his hip, or when Eddie had told him he liked their first kiss, or when they had held each other on the bridge, where warmth and light shot through his body and for a little while, nothing else mattered. It was hard to believe in those times that anyone, including him, could look at the vines and leaves coursing through his body and see something other than life. When he kissed Eddie he felt like he was alive. 

No one ever talked about homosexuality and said love. And that made Richie pause, because he didn’t know if they just hadn’t known how it felt to hold Eddie’s hand in his and feel the bones of his fingers and have a heart that beat so hard for him that it was painful, or if Richie was deluding himself. They said that sometimes, that boys like him were just confused, but that was hard to believe, because this was the only thing that made sense. 

But it was enough. The fear that he was wrong about love was enough to stop him from saying it.

“I kinda got the idea when I was really crankin’ it to Christian Slater,” Richie said instead, because making jokes was easy.

“Fuck you. It doesn’t even fucking matter. Forget it.”

“Forget what?”

“Like just… Forget it. It’s not important.” Eddie huffed and then brushed his hair back with a hand where it had started to fall messily over his forehead. “But like, just because Bowers or whatever says something stupid doesn’t mean you have to listen to them. You’re getting out of here. He’s not going with you. Why fucking bother trying to suck up to him  _ now _ ?”

“I’m supposed to just take it? For months? I need a fucking  _ break _ , Eddie. From me.”

Eddie looked over his shoulder at the calendar -- Star Wars themed -- on his wall. When he looked back at Richie there was a shine in his eye like he’d suddenly thought of something.

“Spring break is next month,” he said.

“So?”

“ _ So _ you have a car. And we’re both eighteen.”

“We can go anywhere we want,” Richie said, the realisation hitting him in a sudden burst of inspiration. 

“Can you wait a month?”

“Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. Where should we--”

There was a creak on the landing outside and Eddie made desperate waving motions to Richie. Richie slipped off the bed and onto the floor, sliding himself under the bed frame just in time before Eddie’s bedroom door swung open; from his angle, crushed flat on the ground under the mattress, Richie could twist his head enough to see the back of the door and some light spilling in from the hallway. 

“What’s going on?” Mrs Kaspbrak’s voice was calm but suspicious.

“Nothing, Mama,” Eddie said. Whenever he talked to his mother his voice became softer, more childish, like he was packing himself down and putting away his real feelings.

“I thought I heard you talking.”

“No, Mama.”

“You’re not still sulking, are you? You know I hate seeing you all upset.”

“No.”

“Because seeing you like that makes me think that maybe you’re not mature enough for college, just yet. You can’t sulk and have little tantrums in college.”

“I wasn’t…” The bed creaked above Richie’s head as Eddie moved uncomfortably. “I’m going to go to college. I just had a fight with my friends.”

“I keep telling you Eddie…”

“Mama, can I go to sleep, please?”

“Yes. You should be asleep already. It’s not healthy to stay up this late. Goodnight Eddie.”

“Goodnight, Mommy. Love you.”

There was a pause where Richie found himself cringing into the floor like he was scared she had somehow spotted him after all, wedged in uncomfortably next to a couple of old shoeboxes and ancient school projects left to gather dust, but she ended up leaving without a word. After her footsteps had faded out down the hall and the door of her room clicked shut, Richie rolled out from under the bed, shaking a dust bunny out of his hair. Eddie, still sitting on the bed, looked unspeakably embarrassed. 

“She thinks you’re like, a doll made out of the finest glass, man.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You should like, break both your legs or something one day, and then maybe she’ll realise you wont die if you get injured.”

“Why the  _ fuck _ would I do that?” Eddie had never broken a bone and looked aghast at the idea of having to go through that kind of pain.

Richie stifled a laugh. “I hate your Mom, dude.”

There was a second where he thought Eddie might argue back, but he just looked at Richie with new fear. “You can never tell her you’re gay. I don’t care, because you’re my best friend, but she’ll go crazy. She’ll probably think you’ll like, infect me with homosexuality and make me go to the doctor.”

That's just how it was from then on, then. They both understood that Richie _ was gay. _ And he supposed he'd admitted it, kind of, but part of him still wailed in horrified protest. 

“Jeeze, thanks Eds, you’re really making me feel the love. I’m not going to tell anyone, anyway.”

“No one? Not even Bev or Stan or…”

“No.” Richie stood up off the ground and brushed dust off his jeans. “I better get out of here before your Mom catches me.”

They checked the coast was clear and Eddie escorted Richie quietly down the stairs and out the backdoor, moving through the silent house like ghosts. At the doorstep, Eddie touched Richie’s arm to stop him. He hovered for a minute before he spoke, even looking back over his shoulder just to make sure that his mother wouldn’t suddenly appear behind him, furious and hysterical.

“If you’ve broken up with Ruth you think me and you could like… Fool around again, sometimes?” Eddie said. 

Richie tried not to smile too much. “Yeah, sure.”

He did not bring up Eddie’s own remark about not being gay. It would have been both cruel and go wildly against his own interests. He just leaned in to give Eddie the quickest of kisses on the lips, a light peck that took Eddie completely by surprise and left him red-faced, then hopped the fence out of the yard, not looking behind him in case it destroyed the little bit of courage he had. Richie was breathless when he got back to his car, turning the engine on and waiting for the heater to kick in, eyes bright for the first time all year. 

When he got home, he took the photograph out of his drawer. He was going to pin it back on his wall, but he decided against it; he didn’t want to lose this. When he left it was coming with him. He grabbed his stash box from under his bed and slid it between the small bottle of vodka and the cash he had in there, hiding the box back against the wall, where no one would see.

The clock had ticked past midnight; it was March 1st. Spring had come to Derry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Swingin' Party by The Replacements
> 
> Eddie is ... He's working stuff out. What he said about none of the Losers believing Richie is gay is true, though. Well... Someone knows more than they're letting on. 
> 
> There's a few more chapters left of teenage antics (if "antics" is the right word for it. what's the sad version of antics?) but we're going to be transitioning into the adult chapters soon. Also if anyone noticed the timeskip date did change from 2016 to 2014; I'd been using 2016 as the timeskip date because that's the date in the movie, but realised the skip being a round twenty years kind of made more sense from a plot standpoint. 
> 
> make sure to check out my other fics! Not Quite Young recently finished. 
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay)   
[Tumblr](http://saints-row-2.tumblr.com)


	9. 1994: you got a pretty vision in your head/a pencil full of poison lead/and a sickened smile illegal in every town

All the others noticed Eddie and Richie were sitting by each other in homeroom again; Stan shot them a long-suffering stare when he walked into the classroom that morning, exchanging a glance with Bill, who just shrugged. Despite the looks, they all seemed happy enough to accept Richie back into the fold, argument or no. School was sedate, but the seven of them piled into Bill’s house that evening, overflowing the living room with homework and study books, but also an ample supply of snacks. The intention to study was there, but ‘study groups’ amongst the Losers were often wildly disorganised, however well-intentioned. It made Richie feel a little better; his friends explained shit to him and helped him remember stuff more easily than most of the teachers did, even when he found the subjects boring. It was a shame that he would obviously be imposing too much of a burden on his friends to ask for their help regularly. 

Georgie occasionally joined them, drifting in and out of the room to see if the big kids were doing anything interesting yet, always being disappointed that they were still looking at school stuff he didn’t care about. Bill’s parents were around, but mostly happy to leave the kids to themselves. The sound of Bill’s mother playing the piano sporadically drifted through the house; Richie couldn’t decide if he liked it or not. Like always for the Denbroughs, it was irritatingly nice. Maybe he was just jealous.

No one pushed Richie for an apology, but he felt like he wanted to give one. They were all in the middle of arguing about  _ The X-Files _ vs  _ Quantum Leap _ , the cancellation of the latter having turned Stan against  _ The X-Files _ , something Beverly found unforgivable because of her deep adoration of Dana Scully. The conversation was getting heated around the idea of what exactly constituted a rip-off when Richie, who liked both shows but not in a particularly intense way cut off Bill, who was arguing in defense of  _ The X-Files  _ like it was his own child.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about the theatre, I was being a dick,” Richie said.

“You were,” Bev said. “But we love you.”

“Gross, but thanks.”

Eddie had a small smile on his face and Richie tried to not look directly at it, like he was scared of seeing too much. Mike, who was lying on the floor next to Bill, allegedly helping him with Gov and really just contributing to the on-going debate by arguing everyone needed to watch  _ Star Trek _ , spoke up.

“So… You wanna talk about what was going on?” He asked, gently.

“Yeah, you guys couldn’t handle that I was the only one getting my dick wet, so I took sympathy on you all,” Richie said. “I’m basically a martyr.”

The others pelted him with popcorn until Bill’s dad caught them and made them clean it all up, Richie making Eddie furious by eating pieces off the floor. After they left Bill’s, Richie drove them out to a road a few blocks away, the small parking space behind a grocery store that was dark and quiet in the evening, out of sight by people walking by. Eddie kissed him feverishly, though he threatened he wouldn’t because Richie was such a pig, hands leaving trails on Richie’s skin he could feel long after he dropped Eddie off home.

The biggest concern in Richie’s life was money. He’d dropped a lot on the Dickmobile, and it took money out of every paycheck for gas, which made it a lot harder to save. And he needed money for the trip and to get the fuck out of town. Eddie was going fifty-fifty on everything, but his savings weren’t that impressive either; he mostly got by on the small allowance his mother provided. The hardware store where Richie worked weekends wasn’t interested in giving him more hours; they told him flatly they didn’t need other people working weekdays, so he went job hunting.

There was a junk store that was roughly in the middle of town; it had been there for a while but had been taken on by someone else, Richie had heard down the grapevine. The owner’s son, or something. He didn’t care that much, but had seen a flyer in the window saying they wanted help so he’d dived in immediately. The shop was called Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes, which Richie thought was the most unlikely and stupidest name he’d ever heard, but no one was asking him. He’d never paid that much attention to the shop growing up because in the past it had always had a window brown with dirt and a window display of ancient, battered shoes and garden equipment. It had been repainted a couple of months ago, and now bore the name of the shop in large letters on the window, which had more interesting if slightly odd curios than just garbage. Some of it looked like actual antiques; Richie admired an insane-looking stuffed bird in a glass case, posed tastefully on top of a huge wooden chest of drawers that looked like it could have housed a family of four in the Middle Ages. 

He let himself into the dim, dusty interior of the shop. It smelled like old wood and age; Richie recalled cracking open an old library book and catching the unique scent of old paper that had been run through a hundred hands. The big front-facing windows let in a decent amount of light, but there was too much furniture for it to penetrate far into the store, leaving the clerk’s counter shrouded in shadow. Richie edged around the obstacles on the way in, making his way to the guy sitting at the back, behind the counter, who had his feet up on the desk while he read a book.

The man had tight jeans and a floral button-up shirt, slicked back blond hair, styled himself in a way that was slightly flamboyant and a little feminine, and had a coolly authoritative stare when he looked at Richie that made it clear he was uninterested in any nonsense. He was immediately, obviously gay, and Richie found himself instantly rooted to the ground. He was, he realised with some shame, a little afraid.

“Help you, kid?” The shop owner said. He sounded vaguely local, definitely New England, but Richie didn’t recognise him. 

“I, uh,” Richie said, his voice coming out a little quiet even in the muffled silence of the store. “Sign said you were hiring.”

“You look a little young… I need someone to do deliveries and pick-ups.”

“I’m eighteen. I have my own car, even. I just need another job for after school, my weekend job won’t give me more shifts.”

The shop owner moved his legs off the desk, sitting upright to squint at Richie. The scrutiny made Richie take a nervous step away, as if he was afraid of being recognised and needed to stick to the shadows. It occurred to him again that he'd never actually _ met  _ a gay man before and the fact this guy was so incredibly obviously gay felt like a gigantic elephant in the room that Richie could barely peer around. There was a million questions suddenly springing up in the back of his mind, as if he'd ever have the fucking guts to ask them. He jammed his hands into his pockets to try and make himself look less obviously awkward, scuffing his foot on the floor.

"I don't bite, kid," the shop owner said. "What does a high schooler need two jobs for?"

"I know," Richie said, defensively. "I was just wondering, like, uh… What happened to the last guy who ran this place."

"My dad? He had some health stuff. I used to run a store out in Provincetown in Massachusetts, but me and my brother came back to help out. My name is Pete, not that you asked." He was a little acerbic, but in a light-hearted way that suggested he was finding this all funny.

"I can't imagine ever choosing to come back here," Richie said, with disbelief. "That's why I need the money. Get the hell out of here."

"Oh, well, it’s not good to me if you leave right after I hire you. But I felt the same way, when I was your age. Small town, small minds."

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

Pete blinked at him, leaning an elbow on the desk like he was listening intently. Richie found it hard to look at Pete directly, kept looking around the store instead, as if the direct eye contact would unveil him too easily. He still wasn't sure that just being in the building  _ with _ a gay man wouldn't mark him out as being one of them. He felt like he might have said enough for Pete to  _ realise _ what he meant, but he had to hold his tongue to keep himself from saying more. Just a little while ago he'd told Eddie he didn't want anyone to know, but he'd also never met someone who had gone through the trial of fire he had and come out of it alright. The idea he'd get out and come back, though, was so depressing it filled him with a horror that bordered on the existential. Richie didn't think there was anything that would  _ ever _ get him to come back, no matter what anyone said.

"You might like Provincetown," Pete said, with a softness to his voice that made Richie feel suddenly ashamed of himself. "It's not like here. You can be whatever you want there. People are more open-minded. You know what I mean?"

Pete sounded… Concerned. Like he was worried about Richie, which only made Richie more anxious. He glanced out the window at people walking by, and the idea someone might see him in the store put a cold bolt of fear down his spine. It made him suddenly very sad when he realised that he couldn't work here. He couldn't. There was a gentle look on Pete's face that made Richie know that Pete understood what it was like to have that ache deep inside your belly. When Pete looked at him, he saw himself. When Richie looked at Pete he saw… 

A warning.

"Actually, I uh…" Richie couldn't think of an excuse. "I don't need a job that bad. I shouldn't waste your time."

Pete quirked an eyebrow but just shrugged. There was the sense that he  _ got it _ but the  _ getting it  _ made Richie flare up with shame and anger. He didn't want to be seen without his express fucking permission, but Pete cut right through it. Of course he did; he'd already beaten through the hedge maze that Richie was trying to guard himself in, knew it like the back of his hand, and it provided no defenses anymore. 

Richie had to get out of here. He didn't want to be understood. He didn't want to exist.

"I gotta go," Richie said. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Pete said. "I get it."

Richie wanted to scream  _ no you fucking don't _ , but that would have been a lie. That was the entire fucking problem. He just picked up his feet and spun on his heel, the shame creeping up his neck and making him burn under his collar. When he burst out into the cold street, the contrast stung his skin and he yanked the collar of his coat up to try and shield himself a little. He felt profoundly stupid as the door to Secondhand Rose slammed shut behind him, his eyes solidly on the ground. Even as he walked away his brain was churning up reasons to cover himself, to explain why he would have been in that store with a person like that, to try and stop people from ever questioning him. He played through imaginary scenarios in his head over and over, cover-ups and excuses, the whole while as he walked to his car. No one did ask, or notice him, but he couldn't stop thinking of excuses. Just in case. Just in case he got a chance to defend himself.

_ I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, _ he lied.

* * *

Richie took a drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out over the railing. Eddie, sitting behind him, still made an exaggerated show of waving the smoke away from his face. They were on the fire escape behind the school, looking down on the glorious view that was the dumpsters. They weren't technically meant to be out there, but the rare occasions where a teacher actually noticed them they'd just make vague promises to leave and then didn't. They were too low on anyone's list of concerns for anyone to really care what they did. 

Eddie picked a piece of lettuce out of his sandwich and glared at it like he was scrutinising it for cleanliness. Chicken salad on whole grain. How like him. Richie was eating a large bar of chocolate for lunch, and felt like he was the one who was better off. 

"I think I know where we can go on spring break," he said, ashing his cigarette.

"Yeah?"

"Place called Provincetown."

"Never heard of it."

"It sounds cool. Like, there's beaches and like, bars and clubs and shit. And the people there are cool."

"How are they cool?"

"You know… Not all fucking repressed and closed-minded like this shit hole. They're cool."

Eddie nodded slowly, like he got it.

"How did you hear about it?" He said.

After Pete had told him about it, Richie had gone to a travel agency, one in fucking Bangor after the one in Derry had no information, under the guise of looking for a job but in reality looking for more info. He'd scooped some flyers for tourists and fled the scene, feeling strangely invigorated by the faces of the happy, smiling people. He'd even logged onto the school computer that had internet to dig stuff up, although he didn't particularly know how to use Mosaic and didn't find anything useful, and had been scared off by Mr Fordham, who guarded the computer like it was a precious commodity he didn't think children should be allowed to use. Richie didn't know if Mr Fordham could check what he'd looked at and hoped not, because he had absolutely spent a few precious minutes trying to see if you could look at naked guys online like he'd heard you could before he'd actually tried to look for Massachusetts travel information. 

"I just heard," Richie said.

"Where is it?" 

"Massachusetts."

"Massachusetts? Why are you going to  _ Massachusetts _ for spring break?" Stan asked as he walked through the door onto the fire escape, narrowly missing hitting Eddie. Beverly followed him, walking over to lean on the railing next to Richie so she could steal the cigarette.

"Mind your own business, Stanley, me and Eds are going on a pussy cruise. You're not invited," Richie said.

"I literally cannot think of anything worse than having to sit in a car with you for six hours so knowing I'm not invited is the most relief I have ever felt," Stan said. He reached into his bag to pull out a bag of chips, Beverly immediately swooping in to grab a handful.

"How are you going to convince your mom to let you go?" Beverly asked Eddie.

"I told her it's for school," he said, looking faintly embarrassed. "She still doesn't really want me to go."

"Fuck her," Richie said. "My parents don't know I'm going yet."

"So what, you're going to tell them last minute?" Stan said. "Bad call."

"Lucky if I tell them at all. I'm an adult, now. I can do what I want."

Beverly handed him back the cigarette. 

"How come it’s just you and Eds?" She asked. She leaned her back against the railing, pulling her coat tighter around her shoulders. Spring it might be, but it was still frosty. "I thought Losers stuck together. You sick of us already, Trashmouth?"

Richie and Eddie glanced at each other, trying to think of a reason and failing. Richie looked away again quickly, afraid the look said too much.

"Drop it, Bev," Stan said. 

"I'm only kidding," Beverly said, a little bewildered by the serious reactions. "Anyway, I'm going to stay with my aunt again."

Richie studied Stan's face for a second. Did he know? There was an impassive coolness in Stan's expression that gave away absolutely nothing, but there was a certainty to how he behaved that was unsettling. It was so often like that with Stan; he was just confident about what was true, but Richie needed that thin veil of doubt and uncertainty to feel safe. The idea that Stan wasn't someone he could feel safe around was at once both awful and absurd; he had known Stan since they were both five years old, and he was possibly the most practical and rational person Richie knew. He would no more give away the secrets Richie was clinging onto than he would cut off his own leg. 

But Richie was not a rational person, and he didn't want Stan to know. Or anyone to know. 

"Can you believe this is our last spring break?" Eddie said.

"No it's not," Beverly said. "We'll see each other when we come home on spring break."

"Speak for yourself, I'm never coming back," Richie said.

He didn't say it to be mean but Beverly still looked crestfallen and he remembered that he was not the only one who was struggling with the idea of them all drifting apart. He nudged his elbow against Bev's in a slight motion of sympathy, and she did smile at him, but it wasn't all that convincing. 

Them slowly drifting apart, their friendships vanishing as they became less and less important was horrifying. It was almost easier to imagine some kind of apocalyptic event tearing them all apart than the simple concept their friendship might not withstand the trials of time and distance. At least if they got split up because the world ended it wouldn't be their fault. Looking at his friends and knowing he was choosing to leave them behind made Richie feel like a failure. A lot of things made him feel like a failure. 

"It's the 20th century, not the 1600s," Stan said. "We're always going to be able to keep in touch."

"Oh, dear sirrah Beverley," Richie began, his voice high and posh and warbling, like an old Duke. "Hast thou received my correspondence? Thou hast not informed thine if thy shall be attending mine gala this forthcoming Saturday. Please respond at thine own soonest possibility with the pre-addressed carrier pigeon."

Beverly laughed. Stan rolled his eyes.

"Your pronouns are all over the place," Eddie said.

"I'll pro your nouns," Richie said. 

"Idiot."

"Loser."

"Asshole."

"Hey Eds, you hear the one about your mom?"

"You hear the one where I break your glasses?" 

"I change my mind," Stan said. "I can't wait to see the back of you guys."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands by Elliott Smith
> 
> Provincetown is a real place and a tourist hotspot for the lgbt community. i obviously have absolutely no ability to like go there or verify what its like but like bear with me okay
> 
> the shop owner is from the novel; in the movie he's replaced by Stephen King having a cameo but in the book he's a sarcastic flamboyant gay man so we're just gonna say he did run the shop in the 80s/90s.


	10. 1994: sometimes i think that you'll never/understand me/maybe this time is forever/say it can be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter comes with a PLAYLIST! the mixtape Richie has made for Eddie is available on [spotify here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/453Umslif92Gh3rRYOWQob?si=ciyO9uXpTyiOm6qD0Ogx8A) so you can listen along. thank you to my boyfriend Ezra for putting it together. hes the best.

'The back of you guys' was a few weeks later, when school was out for spring break and Richie piled his suitcase into the back of the Dickmobile. His parents, as Stan had predicted, were not happy. They told him he couldn't go, but he said he would go anyway, and they gave up in a fit of disgust, swearing they weren't going to help him with whatever trouble he got himself into. He didn't care, though, because he failed to see a point over the last few years where they really had been much of a help. Richie was happy to sling his stuff into his car and peel out of the driveway for the week, knowing full well he was making a clear statement that he did not need them anymore. 

He drove to Eddie's house and heard the fighting even before he pulled up to the curb. Mrs Kaspbrak was giving it her all, her voice hysterical with anger and fear, wailing like a restless ghost. Eddie was yelling back, but he was never good at defending himself from his mother, and he was being almost drowned out by her. Richie was rigid with tension in the car; he wanted to burst in through the front door and rip Eddie away from her, drag him into the safety of the Dickmobile and tear out of Derry forever. He wasn't sure if that would really help, though. 

The option was taken away seconds later when the door flew open and Eddie came charging out, face red with angry tears, dragging two suitcases after him. Richie jumped out of the car to go help him, yanking open the stiff rear door of the Dickmobile and grabbing one of the cases with the speed of someone trying to escape a house fire. Sonia Kaspbrak followed only half a beat later, exploding through the door, her eyes wild and face trembling with rage.

"Eddie! Eddie you come back here right this sec-" She stopped when she saw Richie, her face turning a violent shade of plum as Eddie wrestled one case into the backseat of the car. " _ You! _ "

"Hi, Mrs K," Richie said. 

He was joking, but the truth was he was afraid. He didn't fear his own parents because the consequences of making them angry almost didn't exist, but the consequences of pissing off Sonia felt far more tangible. She wasn't like most parents, who would shake their heads with disappointment, ground you, take away your TV. There was something sick about Mrs Kaspbrak, and it meant you couldn't expect her to behave like a regular parent, to say and do the things that were normal. She was an unpredictable and dangerous animal to Richie, and he was glad he was standing between her and Eddie. 

"I told you I don't want you around here, you little monster!" She said. "I warned you! I know your parents!" 

"We'll write you!" Richie said, throwing Eddie's other case into the car and slamming the door.

Eddie raced for the passenger seat and Richie bolted for the driver's side door. Terrifyingly, Sonia took off across the lawn towards them, lunging for the car as Richie pulled the door shut with the two of them safe inside. She hammered a fist on the window, her anger blazing like a rocket. Her eyes were fixed on Richie as he started up the engine, Eddie sitting in shock like a kidnapped princess.

"I know what they say about you, Richie Tozier," Sonia hissed. "I'm not letting someone like  _ you _ hurt my Eddie Bear."

It was so guttural and viciously spat that Richie looked at her in alarm. What the fuck did she  _ know _ ? If Eddie hadn't grabbed his arm then and jerked him back to reality he might have gotten too caught up in the moment and asked, which could have been fatal. As it was, with the support of Eddie's hand on him, Richie found the strength to gun the engine. With sensible precaution, Mrs Kaspbrak leapt back and let Richie pull away from the sidewalk, shooting down the street and taking the corner a little too fast, tires complaining about the wet tarmac. 

Eddie didn't look back or say a word until they were almost out of Derry, taking the road that would lead them to the highway. The adrenaline in Richie's body was making him vibrate with tension, gripping onto the steering wheel so tightly his arms were locked into place. Eddie was teary-eyed with futile anger and embarrassment, his face and neck burning pink, his lower lip trembling dangerously. He had never looked so young and so vulnerable. When words came out of him, it was with an explosive velocity.

"I don't want to hear a fucking thing about my mom all week, ok?" He said, voice brittle and spiky with anger. “No fucking mom jokes. None. I don’t want to hear her mentioned at  _ all _ .”

“Ok,” Richie said, gently.

Eddie scrubbed his face furiously, trying to wipe away some of the tears. Richie drummed his fingers on the wheel as he waited at a red light. 

“Did you pack enough luggage?” Richie said. “Did you remember the kitchen sink?”

“Fuck off,” Eddie said, still a little moody. He was sitting low in the seat, with his arms folded defensively over his chest, glaring out through the windshield at the road and the rain bouncing off the sidewalk.

“Hey, I made you something,” Richie said.

“You  _ did _ ?” Eddie said, a little suspiciously.

“Yeah. It’s in the glovebox.”

Eddie popped it open, pulling out a cassette tape that had  _ For Eds _ written on the label. He looked at it, the anger in his face vanishing.

“You made me a mixtape?” Eddie said.

“Yeah. You don’t have to listen to it.”

“Of  _ course _ I’m going to listen to it. You made it for me.”

Eddie took out the Talking Heads tape that was in the car stereo and pushed in the tape Richie had made him. Richie was smiling a little, with anticipation and with optimism, and soon Eddie was grinning back as Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears starting playing through the speakers. An hour later when the tape was wrapping up with Father Figure by George Michael, they were belting out the lyrics and clutching hands so tightly Richie didn’t think he’d ever let go. Derry was so far behind him he couldn’t even see it in the rearview mirror, and he found himself hoping he never would again.

* * *

Eddie had never swum in the sea before and it was cold, because it was fucking April in Massachusettes, but they risked it anyway the first day they were in Provincetown, when the sun was bright and they convinced themselves it wouldn’t be  _ as  _ cold. They dived in shrieking, kicking water at each other and howling at how cold it was, hysterical at their own audacity. Some of the locals passing by laughed at them, seeing the two boys splashing through the freezing water with no apparent concern for common sense or their own health. The stupidity of it all only made Eddie  _ more _ bold, insisting on staying in the water until his lips were blue and he was shaking from the cold. They swam out so far they couldn’t even see the people on the beach as more than blurs, wrestling in the water, splashing each other and laughing. Richie dragged Eddie underwater with him, kissing as they kicked through the waves.

They ended up back on the beach, wrapped in towels and shivering, huddled together for warmth. They were still laughing, too deep in their inside jokes to care if they looked insane to anyone else. The beach was vast, golden sand that was still bright in the spring, edged on one side by clear blue waters and on the other by a sea of long green grass. A lighthouse overlooked them, bright white and imposing, like a sentry they were happily defying. There were plenty of other people around, but Richie just kept thinking about how he'd never seen any of them before and would never see any of them again, and it was a little easier to care less about what they might think. The other thing that made it easier was when Richie was kneeling behind Eddie, toweling his hair dry, they both watched a couple strolling by. Two men, both in their late thirties maybe, holding hands as they walked an elderly bulldog. Richie paused, the towel draped over Eddie's shoulders. One of the men glanced at the two of them and smiled, and Richie found himself smiling back. Eddie took the towel away from Richie and finished drying his hair himself.

They messed around on the beach most of the day; they raced over the sand, exploring the shore, Eddie always faster than Richie but never letting him fall too far behind. Richie tackled him to the ground, both of them yelling insults and curses as they wrestled, half burying each other in the sand, and Eddie didn’t reach for his inhaler even once. They collected handfuls of shells and sea glass, polished smooth by the water, piling them in their pockets for no reason other than the joy of collecting things, the way it felt to hold the cool piece of glass that Eddie had said was the same colour as Richie's eyes, turn it over and over in his palm. They gathered sticks and stones to spell out R + E and howled when the waves washed it all away, laughing at their own poor planning.

When they had arrived at the hotel they had been borderline hysterical trying to book a room, Richie fighting to keep a straight face and Eddie took charge, talking to the receptionist with his most adult, serious voice, which mostly meant communicating in nervous nods and monosyllabic answers. The receptionist checked their IDs but stopped caring once she saw they were eighteen, let them take a room and shrugged off Richie's bug-eyed face as he tried not to crack up and Eddie stamped on his foot to make him be quiet. The two of them had burst into the room and collapsed onto the bed shaking with laughter, immediately making the place a bombsite as they argued aggressively about how tidy it needed to be, Eddie wailing about Richie's insistence on kicking his stuff everywhere, both of them throwing pillows at each other and unmaking every layer of the bedspread. When they slept, though, they slotted around each other as easily as if they'd been doing it for their entire lives. 

Eddie tried to call his mother in the morning after they arrived. She didn't answer, but he left the number of the hotel on the answering machine, just in case, whispering it into the phone, eyes closed against the vision of his guilt. Richie thought about calling his parents and chose not to. He thought a few times of what Sonia Kaspbrak ‘knew’ about him, the idea making his chest tight every time he remembered Eddie saying that she could  _ never _ know Richie was gay.

They didn't talk about that. They had their day on the beach and then scouted the town for everything of value. It wasn't peak holiday season yet -- a shop owner enthusiastically told them that August was the best, when they had the pride parade, something that made Eddie look faintly queasy -- so Provincetown was quieter. There were a lot of families, a lot of locals, people who were used to tourists and who treated the boys with a practiced politeness, because there were going to be hundreds of others passing through their places in no time. But that was fine. Richie didn't want to be remembered or seen. He wanted to be a ghost here, a passing streak of light that left no mark on the backdrop he was passing through, moving too quickly to be seen by their eyes. It was fine if people suspected things about him here, if he was a nebulous questionably gay figure, because no one would ever remember. He could live with it when no one knew who he was, just a kid darting in and out of their lives in a second. It was the  _ knowing _ him he couldn’t take; having a history, being someone they were familiar with, had expectations for. Being someone they remembered. Richie didn’t want to be someone anyone cared about.

The two of them darted in and out of tourist traps and junk stores, hunting for the worst souvenirs they could find, crowing over ugly shirts and then sprinting out when they realised the store owner was staring daggers at them. Richie bought Eddie a snowglobe with a pirate ship in it, Eddie bought him a stuffed lobster with MASSACHUSETS stitched into it, which delighted Richie more than anything correctly spelled ever could. Eddie glowed with the pleasure of knowing him.

They ate junk food for two days until Eddie began to worry it was going to make them ill and convinced Richie to go to a diner for a real meal. They almost made it there but then Richie saw a nice seafood restaurant and the idea of going into a real restaurant, eating together like adults, was so immediately gripping that he couldn’t let it go. Eddie was resistant at first, shaking his head and trying to drag Richie further down the street to the more inoffensive and generic diner that they’d seen before, but Richie yanked Eddie right back in and pleaded for them to go and dine like kings. Eventually Eddie gave in, because he always gave in to Richie in the end, rolling his eyes and huffing like it was a huge deal that Richie wanted to take him out to eat lobster. Not that either of them would actually eat lobster; Richie didn’t eat shellfish and the weird, bug-like creatures scared Eddie a little.

Going in, Eddie seemed nervous that they were going to get in trouble just for being in a restaurant while not ostensibly being ‘adults’, and because Richie was wearing a faded The Cure T-shirt, but the waitstaff were willing to leave them be to giggle at the audacity of their actions in the corner. Most of the other people in the restaurant were families, or older couples, some of whom looked at the two of them with the advanced disapproval of parents waiting for a child to misbehave. Richie saw the sidelong, touchy glances Eddie was giving them, the tension of his shoulders, and made it his mission to distract Eddie. There was a large fish tank on the wall and Richie began assigning names and backstories to the goldfish and koi that waved by, Eddie quickly joining in to contribute random story elements. They were both laughing by the end, forgetting the world around them entirely. 

When the waitress came by she asked them how long they’d been dating. So quickly, as if by reflex, Eddie said:

“We’re not.”

“We’re married,” Richie had replied, beating his eyelashes at Eddie. The waitress had laughed, and that had almost been enough to cover up the bad taste in the back of his throat.

The night after that they found a drag act in a bar. They’d spent most of the day tooling around the beach and the big grassy plain, were sand-blasted and achy, but Richie caught sight of a flyer advertising the show that night and wild horses couldn’t have torn him away. Eddie didn’t even try, didn’t want to try, just combed some of the sand out of Richie’s hair and made him put on a shirt that would make him look a little more ‘mature’. They were both concerned they wouldn’t be allowed in at all, but there was no one guarding the door and they slipped in just after the show had started, sitting at a table in the dim bar to watch the queen on stage. She was tall and had brown hair piled even higher, wore a strapless dress that showed off her toned shoulders and gallons of jewellery, her face done up in glitter and huge, sweeping eyelashes. Richie thought she was beautiful.

She insulted them all but they loved it, sang raunchy songs that had everyone joining in, charmed and belittled and mesmerised the audience. Richie was spellbound the whole time, grinning open-mouthed with delight, unable to tear his eyes away except for moments, moments when he’d glance over at Eddie and see that Eddie’s attention was divided between him and the queen almost evenly. He couldn’t understand why; who the fuck could focus on anything other than the act? Richie couldn’t explain why he was so enraptured, only that she could tell any joke she liked and had people falling over themselves, wiggle her hips and sing sexy and loud, be unapologetic and larger than life and adored, actually  _ loved _ for being so… So… He couldn’t explain it, just loved her immediately and unconditionally. She got to put on a new face and a new identity and people loved it, loved the new person she was when she was on stage. She could be anyone at all behind the scenes, didn’t matter. The queen got all the love anyone could ever need, surely. 

The good times couldn’t last forever; about halfway through the act a staffmember came over and politely asked their ages.

“Twenty-one,” Eddie said.

“Forty-seven,” Richie said.

They were removed with some gentle encouragement, because the drinking age was twenty-one and there was a two-drink minimum and the bar wasn’t going to be responsible for them. Richie begged and said he wouldn’t drink anything, honestly, truly, just give them a water and let them watch the show, please, but the doorman stuck to his guns and ushered them out onto the street. 

Richie was both elated by the show and crushed by not being able to see more of it; he couldn’t work out all his energy, too amped up and filled with conflicting emotions. He ran backwards down the sidewalk as they walked back to the hotel, ran in circles around Eddie, talked constantly, gestured wildly, voice loud and head exploding with ideas. Eddie watched him with a frown and a half-smile, encouraged by Richie’s energy but also put-off by the force with which it was suddenly exploding out of him. He talked about stand-up and how the drag queen had been so funny but she was different to everyone else, how she got to make the dirtiest jokes imaginable, the way she danced and the songs she sang. 

“I’m so pissed off I couldn’t see the rest of it,” Richie complained for the fifth time in twenty minutes. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“They’ll have drag in California, they have everything there,” Eddie said. “Definitely in LA, but there’s San Francisco, too.”

Richie puffed on his cigarette and shook his head. The two of them did not really ever talk about San Francisco, the same way they didn’t talk about the gay bar in their hometown. LA had a veneer of plausible deniability to it. 

“San Fran doesn’t have show business,” Richie said, dismissively. Eddie shrugged. 

There were other gay bars and clubs around Provincetown, but they avoided them without speaking about it. Richie had lingered around a club once, almost as a joke, making eyes at a guy who was in the smoking area just outside, who was wearing ripped jeans and a tight T-shirt and who smiled coquettishly at the two of them. Eddie had reacted like Richie was trying to pull him into an open sewer, hauled him away from the club, furious and almost a little spiteful in his anger. He went quiet and bitter for a while that evening, moody as he picked apart a donut he wasn’t eating. Richie tried to play the clown to lighten the mood, and it worked eventually, the two of them pelting each other with bits of food and falling onto the bed, kicking and wrestling. 

Other men still scared Richie. Winking at a guy in a bar when he knew Eddie was there to save him was one thing; the consequences of actually going through with it and seeing what happened if he flirted with a man terrified him. He was scared of what might happen, and he was scared of never getting over his fear. He had slept in the same bed as Eddie every night for five days, but Eddie was not his boyfriend. Eddie was straight. Sure, they made out, played grab-ass, sure they slept with Eddie’s head on his chest or Eddie’s arms around his waist. But they weren’t dating. They hugged each other, sat with their legs tangled, held hands, held each other, when no one was around. But that wasn’t  _ dating _ , and if Richie wasn’t dating Eddie, and if they weren’t dating then he’d have to date someone else, right? Was he really even gay if he’d never had a boyfriend? 

He did know he was gay. Accepting it did not give him any real feeling of pride or satisfaction. It was like accepting that he was short-sighted, or allergic to penicillin; just a weird, unfortunate complication he had to live with that was bound to fuck up his life at some point. The less he talked about it, the easier it was, as if he could almost forget about it, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have that longing inside himself for proof that people out there lived lives unlike the ones he had to see on TV every day. As much as he wished it would all go away and as susceptible as he was to looking for ways to hide it, he couldn’t live without the hope that maybe it wasn’t a death sentence. 

The tape he had made Eddie stayed in the car for the entire week; every time they drove anywhere they’d play it, both howling along to Pictures of You by The Cure or Heart by the Pet Shop Boys and every fucking time Richie would wonder how Eddie didn’t realise that every single song writer, every musician and poet and singer, they had all been thinking about him. They had to have been, because Richie didn’t know how else every song could be what he felt.

Six days weren’t enough. Six days, roaming the beach, collecting shells and splashing in the surf, burying each other in the sand and lying on their backs watching the clouds. Six days, exploring the town, visiting every funny little gift shop and even wandering through the art galleries, eating at cafes and diners, growing a little familiar with the layout and the lay of the land. Six days of waking up in the same bed. Six days of being around people who didn’t look at them twice when Richie slung his arm around Eddie’s shoulders and hugged him close enough to smell the sea salt in his hair. Six days wasn’t enough.

“We don’t have to go home,” Richie said, on the Last Night. Eddie was carefully folding dirty clothes away in one of his suitcases, a battered little blue thing sized more for a kid than a grown man.

“Of course we do,” Eddie said, with that brisk tone of faint annoyance he used when he thought something was a stupid joke. 

“No, we don’t. We’re adults, we don’t have to go anywhere. We have my car, we have our stuff, we could just drive anywhere we wanted,” Richie said. He was lying on the bed, legs dangling off the end, kicking his feet into the air. “Where do you want to go? If we could go anywhere?”

“Back to Derry, so I can get clean clothes.”

“No you  _ don’t _ . We can buy clothes anywhere. Where do you want to go? Like anywhere. We can go there.”

“I’m not playing this game with you.” Eddie crammed his first aid kit into the case, shoving it until the corners obeyed his will and bent to fit around his clothes. 

“Why not! Plaaaaay with me, Eddie,” Richie said, putting on his most sad and pathetic voice. 

“Because we have to go  _ home, _ Richie. We have school next week. Our SATs are soon. Our friends are waiting for us. My mom is--”

“Your mom fucking sucks. Fuck her, man, and not in the way I always--”

“I told you not to joke about that this week!”

“I’m not! I only brought her up because you did!” Richie sat up too fast, giving himself a headrush. “You don’t have to do what she wants forever. She’s going to ruin your life, Eds.”

She was going to ruin his too, if she got the chance.

“I’m  _ not _ .” Eddie slammed the lid of the suitcase closed. “I came out here with you, even though she didn’t want me to. I’m going to go to California with you after school.”

“Why don’t we go to California right  _ now _ .”

“Because I’m not going to give up on school. Shut up about running away, Richie.”

“It’s not running away. Running away is stupid kid’s stuff. We’re moving on with our lives. We’re allowed to.”

“And we’re going to  _ after  _ school. Do you want me to pack your suitcase?”

Richie flopped back on the bed hard and rolled over onto his side. He didn’t answer. Eddie sighed dramatically and started putting Richie’s stuff away, neatly folding it, handling it all with far too much care, as if it wasn’t literally someone else’s dirty laundry. Richie had seen Eddie cringe away from other people’s shoes and yet there was, balling up Richie’s dirty socks and underwear like it was fine. Richie screwed his eyes shut because watching Eddie take care of him made him hurt so fucking badly it was almost unbearable. He felt like all the rocks they’d gathered on the beach were now lodged inside his esophagus and weighing him down to the bed.

Eddie clunked around the room for a while, tidying and putting away the last of their vacation before he crawled into bed beside Richie. He pushed his head into the back of Richie’s neck, breath tickling the hair there, and his arms went around Richie’s waist, just like always. It was so fucking incredibly unfair.

“You think every day is gonna be like this, when we go away?” Richie said.

“What? Arguing about stupid shit?”

“Yeah. But like… Eating together. Going around places. Exploring.”

“I wish. Probably not. This is just a vacation.”

“You wish, though?”

“Yeah. You’re the only person I want to spend every day with.”

Richie curled up tighter and felt Eddie curl himself around him.

* * *

They left in the morning, not too early, but early enough that they’d be back by dinner. Early enough that the sun was low over the ocean when they set out, rippling gold bars over the waves. Eddie watched them mournfully as they drove away from Provincetown, eyes far away. He tried to turn on the tape but Richie took it out and put in a Devo album. It was the wrong mood entirely and he saw the way Eddie’s brows furrowed with disappointment and failed to ignore it. 

The air in the car was tenser than it should be. By rights they should have been reminiscing, talking cheerfully about their adventures, happy to see their friends again. Eddie thought Bev would want to hear about the drag queen, Ben would want to hear about the ocean… He tried to encourage Richie to join in, but Richie felt like he didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. He just wanted this all to be over with, now. If it was going to end and he was going to have to go back to Derry then let it fucking end. 

He chainsmoked even when Eddie pointedly coughed irritably at him and switched out tapes at almost every red light, growing annoyed with every album he put on until two hours in when he gave up entirely and turned the stereo off to let them sit in silence. He didn’t even want to stop for lunch, but did on Eddie’s insistence that he needed to eat, the two of them moping around in silence at a roadside Denny’s. It was an easy drive, almost a straight line once you got onto the 95. No need to think. No need to do anything but watch miles of asphalt disappear under his tires as the landscape warped into something more and more horribly, achingly familiar.

They’d passed into Maine when Eddie demanded they pull over. Richie did, stopping on the grass bank at the side of the road. Eddie clambered out of the car and walked towards the line of trees. Initially Richie thought he was just going to take a piss, but he realised that Eddie was just standing there and staring into the woods, so he got out of the car to find out what was going on.

“What’s up?” Richie said.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna say when I see my Mom again,” Eddie said. 

“She’ll probably be happy you’re home. She has to get used to you being gone. You’re leaving in a few months.” The idea of things she might have said were so scary they made Richie’s lungs feel tight and breathless. He felt like he needed Eddie’s inhaler.

“Maybe we… Maybe we shouldn’t go this summer.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Eddie turned around to face him, but his face was drawn and pale.

“You… We both spent a lot of money on this vacation. We don’t have a lot of time left to save up. We could even actually find a place to live. Maybe it would be better to wait until next year.”

Richie stared at him like he’d just proposed they go to the moon.

“Are you fucking… No, Eddie. In a year you’ll just be in college, then you’ll say you wanna finish college, then you’ll be like ‘I have to pay off my student loans’, then you’ll be like ‘I can’t leave my wife and two point five kids’ but it won’t matter because by then you won’t be talking to anyone because I’ll be fucking dead.”

Eddie looked at him with his mouth open and face twisted in horror.

“That’s not fucking funny,” he said, voice trembling.

“I’m not joking. I can’t stay in Derry. I’ll throw myself into the quarry and never get out. I have to leave. I wouldn’t be going back at all if it wasn’t for you.”

“So, I have to go with you,” Eddie said slowly, “or you’ll kill yourself.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It is what you said.”

“No it  _ isn’t.  _ I’ll leave even if you don’t come.”

Eddie’s eyes went wide and there was a hurt in his face that was so vivid that Richie thought for a minute that Eddie did understand what he felt when they held each other close for moments that were doomed to end, when his body would hurt from the gentleness of it. 

“I have to go with you or I lose you forever?” Eddie said.

“I have to  _ go,  _ Eds. I can’t stay just for you.”

“I have to go for you, but you can’t stay for me? How is that fair?”

Eddie’s mouth was a hard line. Richie gritted his teeth so tightly he thought he’d crack a filling.

“You don’t get to keep me. You can come with if you want,” Richie said. “I’m not making plans with you for our future because you’re going to leave me one day.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not going to get married one day? Have a wife, have kids?” Richie said.

“I guess. That’s what people do.”

“I won’t. Look, you’re not my boyfriend, you said so yourself. Which means one day we’re going to go our own ways. I’m not ruining my own life waiting for you when you’re going to move on one day anyway.”

“That fucking sucks, Richie.” He was angry, but Richie wasn’t really sure why he was angry. Eddie didn’t seem to know why he was angry either.

“Yeah, it does,” Richie said. 

Eddie walked back to the car and got into the passenger seat. Richie stayed standing by the trees for a second longer. If he didn’t get back in, they’d never leave. He could strand them here forever, if he wanted to. Eddie couldn’t drive -- he’d been taking turns practicing with Mike and Richie and Ben, messing around in their cars, was pretty good at it but still didn’t even have a learner’s permit -- and there wasn’t a phone around for God knows how far. If Richie didn’t get back in the car, the vacation would never end. They would be there forever, until their skeletons and the rusted shell of the car fell into the forest on the highway outside of Portland. 

But that was stupid. Everything ended. Richie got back in the car and they drove the last few hours home down the highway and then down the little town roads that trailed back down until you eventually began passing through the farms and by the ironworks outside Derry, and then far too soon they were on Eddie’s street and the end was so close that Richie could have spat in its eye. 

His car idled on the sidewalk opposite Eddie’s house. Eddie didn’t look like he wanted to get out; he sat in the seat, his hands balled into fists and his face rigid as he tried to force himself not to cry. Richie didn’t know what to do. He wanted to hold Eddie, but didn’t know if he could, if they hadn’t passed some invisible barrier that meant things couldn’t be the same again. Now that he’d laid down lines between them, something for which he still felt insanely, crushingly guilty. It had to be said though, there needed to be an understanding of what was going to happen. He  _ would _ leave.

Eddie started shuffling around the tape collection in Richie’s glovebox until he found the one with his name on it. Richie stared at it, embarrassed.

“You don’t want that,” he said.

“Yes I do,” Eddie said, voice spiky and fragile with hurt. “You made it for me.”

Richie wanted to say he couldn’t  _ really  _ want it, just like he didn’t  _ really  _ want Richie, but couldn’t. Eddie took it, getting out of the car to take both his suitcases out of the trunk, the cassette safe inside his jacket pocket. Richie started to get out of the car to help him but was told not to, slunk back into the seat and just watched as Eddie headed alone into the lion’s den. There was nothing for Richie to do. He had to go home himself, as much as the idea made his stomach twist into anxious knots. He stayed outside Eddie’s house for half an hour, in case Eddie got thrown out onto the sidewalk, but nothing happened. There wasn’t even any yelling. Eventually he accepted that he was waiting for himself more than anyone else and left for home.

Derry did not look different after a week. Maybe it was stupid to hope it would; that he would come back and see how small and weak it was, and then it wouldn’t hold any power over him. But Derry  _ was  _ small and weak, and the power it held over him was immeasurable, because he was infinitely smaller. Pulling into his parents’ drive he kind of hoped they wouldn’t be home; it wouldn’t be unusual for them to be away from home, working late or just being anywhere other than the house, but no luck. His father’s Chrysler was safe in the garage.

Richie walked inside like he was just coming home from school for the day. His mother’s head jerked around with shock when he came in, as if she wasn’t expecting anyone at all. The look on her face was surprise, rather than elation, and the surprise made his stomach drop to his boots. There was a cold feeling of dread beginning to creep over him, sweat prickling at the back of his neck.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

“I didn’t think you were coming home,” was the first thing she said.

Richie licked his dry lips and put his suitcase down on the floor gingerly.

“I told you I was only going for a week,” he said, keeping his voice very deliberately level even as instinctive panic surged inside him.

There was a thundering on the stairs as his father came down to see what was going on. Wentworth looked just as surprised to see his son as Maggie had, and the twinned expression was not elevating the weight that was in his shoulders, in his belly, pulling him down with icy cold stones. He watched his parents look at each other and back to him, like they hadn’t decided how to let him down easy.

“Are you kicking me out?” He said, the fear starting to make his voice crack, like a thin layer of ice buckling under someone’s weight.

“We thought you left,” his father said.

“I  _ told  _ you it was a  _ week. _ ”

The two of them just stared and the coldness of the moment was making Richie shake, his hands trembling with fear. Something was very, very wrong, and he knew that their horror came from the fact they were  _ ashamed _ . They had done something, something they knew would hurt him, something that they hadn’t thought they would ever need to justify to anyone but each other. 

He made for the stairs, pushing past his father who tried to stop him by calling out his name but wasn’t fast enough, charging up the staircase to his room, the sense of fear settling on him so intensely that when he pushed the door to his bedroom open it was thick enough that the horror of the truth didn’t really shake him. He’d been expecting it, really. The worst thing they could have done to him.

The room was bare; the bed had been stripped and the walls were stark, all of his photographs gone, the posters vanished, his CDs and tapes, his mountains of notebooks and VHS comedy collection, the year’s worth of work that had gone into developing his act -- gone. He stood with his hand on the door handle, staring at the void where all his work had been as his parents crept up the stairs after him, waiting to see what his reaction would be. He couldn’t move, just gaped at the light blue wallpaper that was faded around the dark squares where pictures had once hung, the walls pockmarked with pins where his photographs had once been.

“We didn’t think you were coming back,” Maggie said. “You were so angry when you took off, and Sonia Kaspbrak was saying something about you taking Eddie, so we thought that was it.”

“We thought you might be in trouble. But you never wanted our help.” There was a streak of bitterness in Wentworth’s voice so strong Richie could have hung himself from it.

“I said a week,” Richie said, voice soft.

“You never told us the truth before,” Maggie said.

“Where’s all my  _ stuff! _ ” He said, wheeling around on them, anger sparking like a forest fire, blazing out of him now the frosty layer of fear wasn’t holding him back.

“We kept your school books,” Wentworth said. “And your clothes, the important things.”

“Where’s my fucking writing -- my money -- my  _ photographs! _ How could you take my fucking  _ photographs?! _ ” He was too angry to even cry, too angry to do anything but scream, hysterical in his rage and his grief. “Those were the most important things in the world to me!”

“They weren’t even  _ of  _ anything,” Maggie said. “They were all blurs and… Shapes. You spent more time ruining my walls than you did on your schoolwork.”

The fact they thought they were helping him only made Richie angrier. He couldn’t understand how they were so unable to comprehend anything about him, how they still thought him being able to study mattered at all. How they could see how much he treasured the photographs and think he was wasting his time on junk. How they could see him study comedy for hours and view it as nothing more than an unimportant distraction. He couldn’t understand them just as much as they couldn’t understand him, and in that moment, for the first time, he actually, genuinely  _ hated _ them. He had been angry at his parents before, disliked them for things they had said, but this was the first time Richie had allowed  _ hate  _ to enter the equation. 

“What did you do with them?!” He yelled.

“They’re in the trash,” Wentworth said.

Richie tore past them and downstairs. He ran to the trash in the kitchen, but it was already empty, so he raced out onto the street. He kicked over the garbage can, tearing open the bag that was left in there, hands filthy with coffee grounds and old, stale juices. He would have kept digging if his father hadn’t grabbed him and hauled him back. That was the first time Richie had ever come close to physically fighting with his parents, wresting himself out of his father’s grip with enough strength that it scared them both; they had reached a moment where they both knew Richie was stronger than his dad, and that meant something. As if they both realised then that no, he was not a child, and he never would be again.

Everything ended. Richie stood on the sidewalk and looked between his parents, his chest heaving with the effort of just being alive, of keeping himself from screaming. He wanted to scream until his throat was bloody, scream until he puked. 

“I will never,  _ ever _ forgive you,” was the only thing he could say.

He went back up to his room because there was nowhere else to go, his new empty, barren room, where every trace of him had been carefully exorcised as if his parents had never had a son but only an unpleasant poltergeist, and he sat on the floor. He noticed the box under his bed, the one where he kept the money and the things he really,  _ really  _ didn’t want people to see, was still there. He reached out and looked inside it; it still contained the last of his savings, his private magazines. A couple of other things; a switchblade he’d stolen from Henry Bowers years ago, a small bottle of strong vodka, and the flyers about Provincetown. The photograph of him and Eddie was still there. 

There was shuffling outside his room; he recognised his mother’s footsteps.

“I didn’t touch your money,” she said, her voice distinctly reproachful. “I thought you might come back for that. Besides, I didn’t want to know what else you were hiding from us.”

He didn’t say anything, just slid the box under his bed again. Maybe he should have stayed on the side of the road after all. He kept expecting himself to cry, but the tears never came, even when he looked at the place where the photographs had been. He closed his eyes and imagined the water, but the memory felt too distant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which Richie learns that people can go on stage with a fake name and learns completely the wrong lesson from this.
> 
> after this we only have two more chapters of the teenage section of this fic; 13 is an interval and then from 14 we'll be skipping to the adult half of the fic... this fic has ended up being a loooot longer than i had originally intended, which seems to be kind of a trend for me. i like writing so much that i just do... more of it...
> 
> title is Father Figure by George Michael
> 
> please check out my other fics!


	11. 1994: if i ever had a chance it's now then/but i never had the feeling i could offer that to you

"They th-threw out  _ all your st-st-stuff?"  _ Bill was aghast, the campfire highlighting the whites of his wide eyes. 

"Not everything," Richie said, rolling the stick he was holding in his palm to toast the other side of the marshmallow. 

It was a few days after Richie and Eddie had returned home. Richie had held off on telling his friends the full story because he didn't want to do it over and over, didn't want to repeat himself to one group in class, one at lunch, one at home… But now they were all gathered on Mike's family farm to celebrate his birthday, tents pitched in a field not far from his house, camping out in the cool April night. It would be May soon. More troubling than that, their SATs were the second week of May. Richie was not thinking about that, though.

"They kept my clothes, my school stuff, my books, most of my albums," Richie continued. "But they tossed like, all my photos, all my writing, all the comedy I'd recorded…"

"So, anything you made yourself," Bev said.

"Anything they didn't approve of," Eddie said. They both said it in a way that made Richie think they were far more intimately familiar with what had happened than he would have ever wanted them to be.

Richie shrugged and pulled his marshmallow off the skewer and crammed it into his mouth. Ash crumbled on his tongue.

"At least I've got less to take with me now," he said with his mouth full.

Mike opened a bottle of beer and passed it to Richie silently. They had been gifted a few bottles of beer by Mike's grandfather, who had said he knew kids would be getting up to no good and if they were going to be doing that, they would do it on his property where he could keep a goddamn eye on them. There was a gruffness to Mike's grandfather, a demand from him for Mike to do his best and to be less soft that almost seemed cruel, if you didn't understand where it came from. The truth was, and Mike knew it better than anyone, his grandfather adored him. The old man was just afraid for him; afraid of what the unforgiving world would do to a child who was so sensitive and intelligent, so open to love and vulnerable to pain. Richie saw all this in the way Mike's grandfather always had a wise word to say about everything, always a warning and some advice, the way he watched all the Losers Club with a judgemental eye, looking to see if any of them would ever hurt Mike Hanlon. It was the caution that came with love. Richie didn't know if he'd do well being raised by a man like that, but he quietly envied the bond the Hanlon family had. 

Richie took the beer and had a long drink. Ben leaned over to whisper something in Beverly's ear and she smiled, flicking her hair over her shoulder and looking at Ben with a warmth that made the fire seem cold. Richie could never even imagine hating his friends, but he resented that Bev and Ben could just do as they pleased. No one ever questioned them or ever wanted anything but for them to be happy together. It wasn’t their fault, but the beer tasted sour in his mouth as he drank. The idea that anyone would ever see him with Eddie and think nothing but good things without a moment of questioning was ludicrous, not even possible in a far-away vacation town where people had better intentions. Not possible ever, really, because Eddie didn’t love him back, and never would. The truth was, he suspected, that relationships like Ben and Bev’s did not exist for people like him. If they did, he’d never heard about them.

"I can't believe this is really our last year together," Stan said. He sounded haunted by it.

Hearing Stan say it was worse. He was always so confident about what was reality, so certain of how things would go, that hearing him be afraid of something made it seem less like Richie's bursts of anxiety or Eddie's paranoia, or even Bill's occasional dramatic melancholia, and more just like the truth. When he said it, something cold ran down Richie's spine, like the facts had, once and for all, been spoken into existence and now fate would conform to the shape Stan had described.  _ Do your parents hang out with people they knew in middle school? _

"We'll see each other every summer," Mike said, soothingly. 

"Yeah, c-c-come on guys," Bill said. "We're only going t-t-tuh-to be a few hours away." 

"I can't come back," Richie said.

All six of them looked at him. The fire crackled in the silence, wood popping as it blackened and smouldered. Bill, Mike, and Ben's faces were all distraught, but Stan looked like he'd been waiting to hear just that, and Beverly's expression was dour but resolute. 

"Don't say that," Eddie said.

"What, you think I can come back to my parents again?" Richie said, laughing. "They hate me. And do you think you're really going to go back to your Mom? You said she didn't talk to you for two days after we got back from spring break!"

Eddie's eyes were dark but blazing, the fire reflecting off them like perfect mirrors. He was angrier than Richie would have expected, though Richie didn’t really understand why. 

"Stop it, Richie, you're just trying to scare Eddie," Beverly said.

"I'm not scared," Eddie snapped. Beverly looked at him reproachfully, but he didn't apologise.

"Yes, you are," Richie said. 

"If I'm scared, you're an asshole."

"Sure, ok, I'm an asshole."

"Can you b-both stop it?" Bill said, shutting them up immediately. "Why are y-y-you fighting?" 

Richie just shrugged and drank more of his beer. Eddie went and sat a little further away from him, knees drawn up to his chest. His jaw was tense, a muscle in his cheek twitching as he stared into the flames. Through the fire, Ben looked at Richie, his eyes grave and voice level when he spoke.

"I know you think if you make all of us mad so we won't like you, it'll hurt less when you're gone, but that's not true. It's going to hurt no matter what."

Another hush fell, the group waiting for some kind of answer. None of them were watching Richie, but he felt the weight of their expectations. He dug his fingers into the grass, ripping out a handful, listening to the soft sound of roots snapping as he pulled them out of the earth.

"I love you guys," he said. "I don't want you to be mad at me." 

"We love you too, idiot," Beverly said.

He wanted to ask why, but he felt like that would be pushing his luck. He didn't want them to try to explain and realise that the only thing holding him in the group was pity or nostalgia, or the other things the nasty voice in the back of his mind liked to scream at him. Instead, he jammed some more marshmallows on the skewer and cracked wise about _Beverly_ _Marsh_mallows as he and Bill made s'mores for everyone, the moment of antagonism forgotten as quickly as the millions of other silly times they'd all fought had been lost to history as they turned instead to playing party games, laughter rolling through the empty fields.

That night they slept three in one tent and four in the other and Eddie decided to sleep in a different tent to Richie, a decision that seemed bizarre when only a week ago they had been sleeping in the same bed. He missed having Eddie sleeping next to him as he lay under the canvas with Mike on one side and Bev on the other, her gentle snoring mixing with the sound of the wind brushing through the trees, but that was always the case. There was never a time he didn't want to feel Eddie's small, solid form tucked under his chin, breath on his neck, heartbeat on his chest.

He crawled out of the tent as quietly as he could, wriggling out of his sleeping bag -- borrowed from Stan, who had also supplied the tents from his family's extensive collection of camping equipment -- to go smoke outside. It was the dead of night, and this far outside of Derry the sky was crystal clear and darker than obsidian, except for where a seemingly endless number of stars were scattered. The longer you stood and stared the more stars you could see; in the gaps between others, if you were willing to look past the biggest and brightest, there were more stars, always more, further and higher and more distant. Richie's cigarette, in the dark, was the brightest of all. A little spot of light, trapped on earth. He wished he was in the spaces between, further and higher than any star he could see here, so far away and distant from Derry that no one would ever see it at all, rocketing across the universe on his own trajectory. Alone.

There was the distinct sound of a zip and Richie turned to see Eddie emerging from the other tent. Richie's heart hurt. It ached so badly sometimes he thought he was going to have a heart attack. He loved Eddie so much that it felt infinite; his love for Eddie wasn't the stars, regardless of how dense and complex their layers were, because everyone knew stars burned out. Richie's love for Eddie was the space between the stars, the vast, incalculable blackness itself, something that contained the entire galaxy and grew ever outwards. His love for Eddie was everything.

But everything ended.

Eddie didn't love him back. Not in the way he wanted, not in the right way. No, that wasn't true. Richie was the one who loved wrong, he knew that. He was wrong to want more. If he was the space between, he told himself, then he was the black holes too. Huge, sucking voids that ate up everything and destroyed it all, the sign of something gone wrong with the universe. That was him. Too greedy and ill to be satisfied with friendship.

"Are you mad at me?" Richie asked Eddie.

"Yeah, like all the time, dude, you're fucking annoying," Eddie said. 

"Ha-ha. You got really pissed off, though."

"I'm fucking scared!" Eddie laughed. "I don't want to lose Mom. I don't want to lose my home. But I don't want to lose you, either."

Richie wanted to say 'I love you'. He wanted so badly to say it. Eddie  _ knew _ he was gay. But it would ruin everything if he did, he knew it. It would  _ change _ everything, stop it from being just friends messing around and imbue their every action with charged meaning. Things would stop being simple and instead be symbolic; he didn't need his every movement read like tea leaves, for anyone to be trying to discern the truth of if he was just being Richie or trying to recruit them to be one of  _ them _ . All that stuff before, about the fear and weight of saying ‘I love you’, it had all been in Richie’s head the whole time. Boys like him were just confused. 

Richie had seen people out there who were out, who were proud, and he wanted to be them. Fuck, did he want to be them. Pete the shop owner, sitting comfortable in his store, the drag queen on her stage, the couple on the beach. How the fuck did any of those people become themselves? Richie wanted to be anyone but himself, wanted to morph into one of the stupid voices he was always putting on, shift his identity into literally anyone,  _ anyone _ other than Richard Tozier, unloveable coward from Derry. He’d be straight, if it meant he could be one of the comedians on TV that he watched with so much awe. He didn’t care about being gay, would give it away in a heartbeat, if he got to be someone else. Someone who got what they wanted. 

"Can I tell you a secret?" Eddie said.

"You can tell me anything," Richie said.

He knew what he wanted to hear, and told himself that he shouldn't hope. That hope would just make it more painful when he didn't get what he wanted. But Richie could never tell himself anything.

"My inhaler? It's a placebo," Eddie said.

"What?" Richie was startled but as soon as Eddie said it, it made sense. The inhaler had never seemed all that linked to what Eddie was actually _ doing _ , only what he was feeling.

"It's not real. My Mom thinks I have all these illnesses, but I don't. She just convinced everyone to go along with it. The inhaler is fake. Mr Keene told me when I was like, fifteen." 

"But you still… Eddie, you still use it all the time." Except when you're with me and we're racing over the beach and laughing and screaming in a world that accepts us without making us beg for a place in it. 

"Yeah." Eddie laughed, but not because he thought it was funny. "Because I'm scared of what will happen if I don't."

_ You can be brave _ , he wanted to tell Eddie, but didn't. Richie wasn't brave either. Richie never stood his ground or stood up for anything. He only ever just ran away.

“Eddie, do you really want to leave with me?” He said.

“Why do you keep asking me that?” Eddie said. Neither of them answered the other’s question.

* * *

The SATs started. They were bad; this was not surprising. Sometimes Richie was able to put his head down and answer as much as he could, retaining more knowledge than he’d really realised he had, but there were a lot where he might as well have been trying to read Ancient Greek. He guessed half his chemistry exam and finished before everyone else in the room, walking out of the hall the exam was held in like a ghost. 

His friends around him were going through the highs and lows that came with their own strengths and weaknesses, but they were holding it together for the most part. Richie had just gotten a job delivering pizza and probably put more focus into that in the evenings than he did any of his notes. His will to try had gone; there would be no last minute cramming, no hoping for a sudden miracle. He faced the SATs with a complete absence of feeling. He found that he generally forgot about them as soon as he was out of the room, the questions and the hours of sitting hunched over the paper in the unbearable silence gone the second he was out of the door. They just melted off him like dreams. None of it was real life.

Real life was watching the money in his stash grow as he poured in tips and wages. Real life was staying out until the middle of the night working shifts and even though the work was stupid and demeaning, and he was turfing up at the houses of people who laughed in his face when they saw it was him, he knew he was working  _ to  _ something. Time was so short that he had stopped caring entirely what anyone thought and he was smiling wildly every day; grinning in people’s faces as they mocked him like he knew a bigger, better joke than they’d  _ ever _ heard.

Real life was the acceptance letter for the University of Maine that was hanging on Eddie’s fridge. Richie saw it when he snuck in to see Eddie the final night of the exams. The finishing felt so anticlimactic that it was disappointing; he had walked out of his calculus exam on Friday, realised he had no more, then gone with the others to Lou’s diner. They had all eaten stacks of pancakes bigger than their heads and smashed their glasses together in celebration, cheering and laughing about the fact that it was all  _ over,  _ that they would never have to go back to school again. Even with the celebration, it didn’t feel like it could really be done with. It was hard for him to process that he was out of the loop he’d been living in for as long as he could remember of the Monday-Friday routine, that he would not have to wake up one morning and go back to school again. 

Standing in Eddie’s kitchen that night, looking at the letter, he saw the end of all things again. The boys would fall into the water and feel it on their skin, but they had to get out of the water eventually. You couldn’t fall forever. You had to land somewhere.

Richie and Eddie lay in Eddie’s narrow twin bed, the same bed he’d had since he was a kid, wood frame pockmarked and scarred by years of wear and tear, and the rough and tumble lives of little boys. There was barely room for them both, but Richie curled himself up as small as he could and Eddie held him close, as if he was not a tall grown-up -- a full grown man really, with broad shoulders and long legs he didn’t know how to use sensibly -- but a kid again. As if they were both kids, playing at being safe. If school was over, then that meant one last fragment of their childhood had died, and there was so little left.

He pressed his head under Eddie’s chin, curled up against his chest. Richie’s fingers clutched at him, the soft warmth of his body, the delicacy of his skin over the strength of the bones inside him. How couldn’t Eddie see he was strong? He felt stronger than Richie, able to withstand more. Richie bolted at the first sign of pain and suffering; Eddie didn’t even seem to realise he’d been putting up with so much for years. The idea he’d be willing to stay in Derry for longer was insanity.

“You got into University of Maine,” Richie said.

“Yeah, well, I applied ages ago. I don’t have to accept,” Eddie said.

It meant a lot if a college wanted you before they’d even seen your SAT scores. Eddie had worked hard for that GPA, considering how much his own Mom had been fighting against him. The idea Richie was going to pull him away from it all because  _ Richie _ couldn’t bear to lose him felt incredibly unfair. 

“Where in the world would you go right now, if you could?” Richie said.

“Nowhere,” Eddie said. 

Nowhere. 

"We spent four years thinking high school was the most important thing in the universe and now… None of it matters," Richie said. "You got into college. No one's ever gonna care about high school again. None of it matters."

"Thank fuck," Eddie said.

"Just stupid kid shit now."

Everything in high school was dumb kid shit now. All the drama, the years of tests and bad papers, the arguments with teachers, the bullies and the kids being mean at the back of class. The arguments he'd had with friends that felt like the end of the world; none of it mattered. Everything ends. He tightened his arms around Eddie as if hugging him closer would stop things from coming to an inevitable, horrible conclusion. 

The decision to leave Eddie behind felt less like something Richie was choosing and more like the result of him having  _ no  _ choice. He didn't know how he was going to tell Eddie; the easiest way had to be to say nothing at all, to just leave. Then Eddie would go to college with Bill and Mike, and graduate with a top of the line degree in Being Boring and have a nice house and 2.5 kids. It was kind of insane to think they could ever going to have a life together. Richie was going to be a stand-up and be famous, touring the world playing to crowds all over; he couldn’t be tied down with a stay-at-home not-boyfriend anyway. The whole idea they were going to run away and stay together forever was absurd. A kid’s fantasy.

Richie decided, through carefully constructed arguments with himself, that what he had with Eddie was a phase and that he would move on. No one lived the rest of their lives obsessed with someone they knew in high school; the only reason he cared so  _ much _ was because he hadn’t lived enough life to know any better, and once he got out to LA he would move on. He’d make new friends and forget all about this, would look back at it as the stupid thing that happened to him one summer… Alright, two summers. Ok, ok. Six or seven summers. That part wasn’t important. What was important was that he’d look back at it as a grown-up and laugh, tell the person he was dating -- he found himself instinctively hoping it was a woman -- about it, and they’d laugh too. Richie liked to make people laugh.

It was hard to laugh now, when he was still waiting for the feelings to fade. Any day now, it was going to stop hurting so much. Any day now, when he balled Eddie’s T-shirt in his hand and tugged him for a kiss in a private moment under a shady tree, he wouldn’t try so hard to engrave the memory of what it felt like to kiss him into his mind. Any day now, when he saw Eddie reel out a lecture to an audience of sighs, he wouldn’t think about how no one had looked out for him like Eddie had. Any day now, he wouldn’t remember or care about the freckles over Eddie’s cheeks, or the exact shade of his eyes, or the way his hair curled when it was wet. One day all that would be gone from Richie’s mind forever, and he could be blissfully ignorant.

But it wasn’t that day yet. 

* * *

Spring was starting to get warm. It was the first time any of them had thought about going to the quarry since the summer, and Richie had latched onto the idea the second Beverly had suggested it. He suspected they were both on the same wavelength; even if they did, like Beverly believed they would, come back to Derry every summer, there was no guarantee they’d be able to go swimming many more times. It was too good an opportunity to waste, especially on a day in May when the sun was high and the world was creeping towards full summer. They packed up Mike’s truck and Richie’s Dickmobile and drove out, taking a cooler full of soda and beer and popsicles, Richie’s boombox and tape collection, and enough towels to dry an army in case poor little Eddie got cold. 

As always, Beverly was the first to jump off the edge, slicing through the air like a molotov cocktail, Bill and Ben tumbling after her. Stan and Mike followed, shouting as they spun through the open air, hitting the green water below with an explosion of sound. Alone at the top of the cliff, Richie gripped Eddie’s hand and squeezed. 

“Too bad Stan doesn’t have his camera, we could take another photograph,” Eddie said. 

“If you want more photos of me Eddie, all you gotta do is ask,” Richie said, leering theatrically and spectacularly.

“Shut  _ up _ . Forget it, I’m going to see enough of your stupid face on the drive to California. I’ll be sick of you by the end of it.”

Ouch. Eddie started doing the jog to the edge of the cliff, but Richie didn’t move and Eddie came to a sudden stop when he realised he was alone.

“Come on,” Eddie said, frowning a little. “Why are you just standing there?”

Richie could tell Eddie they weren’t going to leave together. Eddie had to know that their childish dreams wouldn’t work out. He  _ had  _ to know. He’d said himself that he was scared and he didn’t want to go anywhere, that he couldn’t let go of his placebos even when he knew they didn’t work, that he didn’t want to lose his mother. Richie was confident in what he believed, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

Guilt, maybe. Shame. He was always filled with so much shame, and it was maddening. He felt ashamed that he wanted Eddie, ashamed that he had to leave Eddie, ashamed he was gay and ashamed that he wanted to stop being gay. It felt like no matter what he did, he would only ever be pursued by the same sensation that he was wrong, and wrong for doing it. He pined for the early days, the moments of lying on his parents’ bed during his birthday and kissing Eddie for the second time, feeling like they were the only people who had ever kissed. There had been such a brilliant period of innocence, before Bowers’ fist had knocked that out of him and dragged him down to the humiliating reality that there was no safe place for a guy like him. Not without giving up something; he was funniest when he told someone else’s life, he was most accepted when he forced himself to be the kind of person he was trying to be. The only person who knew every one of his secrets -- the whole story, that not even the other Losers knew -- was Eddie. 

And that was just another reason why Richie had to leave Eddie behind. Richie was never going to be someone else when Eddie wanted him, and he couldn’t force himself to live with  _ that  _ guy knowing one day Eddie was going to leave him anyway. It was so fucking simple when he laid it out like that, so painfully obvious and true. He would only be free of this town if he left Eddie, too.

“What are you waiting for?” Eddie said.

“For you to drop your guard,” Richie said.

“What?”

Richie barreled into him, sweeping Eddie off his feet and into his arms like a footballer snatching the ball out of the air and racing to score a touchdown, running off the edge of the cliff with Eddie in his arms and sending them both plummeting towards the water. Eddie screamed hysterically with fear and surprise, cursing Richie’s name as they tumbled down, hitting the water with an explosive splash. They sank for a moment before shooting back up to the surface, spitting and gasping for air. Richie laughed wildly at Eddie’s furious face, fending off the retaliatory slaps he got in return.

They swam to catch up with the others, grabbing at each other and splashing through the water, kicking and laughing, both of them swearing blind they were going to kill the other. When they reached the other Losers, Bev asked to play chicken and Richie wasted no time in hoisting Eddie onto his shoulders so Eds could valiantly fight and try to push Beverly off Mike’s back. By that time, Richie had enough water in his ears and sun in his eyes to forget about everything he had come to know; for one last time he was thirteen again.

They hauled themselves out of the lake and clambered back up the side of the quarry to the top where they’d left the cars a few hours later, after the sun had dipped lower and was casting huge shadows over the green waters, making it too cool to really enjoy swimming anymore. The seven of them raced up the dirt banks alongside the quarry as fast as they could to reach the towels and drinks at the top, dripping wet and shivering, their laughter echoing off the great hollow walls around them. 

At the top, Richie slammed on the new Green Day album because he had told Beverly that if she didn’t hear Basket Case immediately her life wasn’t worth living, and Mike tossed everyone drinks from the back of his truck while Eddie grabbed the towels, enshrining himself in a beach towel patterned with pink flowers that engulfed his entire body. With his little tousled head poking out the top, he looked younger and more innocent than he had in years, as if he was a swaddled baby, protected from the others by his mother’s ugly seventies towel. 

Richie dried his own hair vigorously with a towel that he left flop over his shoulders, ignoring the goosebumps forming on his bare skin so he could keep arguing with Beverly about the qualities of varying Nirvana albums. He was still only wearing a pair of worn-out cargo shorts and sometimes he would catch Eddie looking over at him, little side-long glances that Richie only noticed because he was looking at Eddie too. Not staring, just… Looking. It was hard not to, even if Eddie had the towel around his entire body like a shroud, he still had a graceful arch to his neck and shoulders that Richie couldn’t stop thinking about once he’d noticed it. He was never very good at getting Eddie out of his mind. He should have started charging rent.

Beverly had gone over to Richie’s car to snag something out of her knapsack, which she’d left on the backseat, and he took a moment to break off from the others and run after her. She was sitting in the back, rifling through her bag, and he slid in alongside her, shutting the door. She glanced up and grinned.

“What are you playing at, Trashmouth?” She said, expecting a joke.

“Can I ask you something?” He said.

“Depends, is it something you wouldn’t want your mother to hear?”

“I don’t want my mother to hear anything I say. Seriously, though.”

She picked up on something in his tone of voice, a slight intensity to his words that was uncharacteristic enough that she knew she should take this seriously. She leaned back in her seat.

“Of course, Rich.”

“Ok, so… I know you don’t want to talk about you and Ben, but like… How come you guys don’t get together right now?” Richie said. “What’s stopping you?”

“That I’m going to New York and he’s going to Texas?” Beverly said.

“Yeah, but if you love him, can’t you just…” 

“I do love him. And that’s why we can wait four years,” she said, with a certainty like she was simply reading out a historical fact from a board. “When we’ve both graduated, and we can do whatever want, then I’m going to ask him to marry me.”

“Yeah? He know about this?”

“Of course he does. We both decided. If it’s real, true love, then four years won’t feel like anything at all.”

“Yeah, that does sound like something Ben would come up with. Sorry, I mean  _ the future Mr Marsh _ .”

Beverly punched him in the shoulder. 

“Why are you asking?” She said.

Ben and Bev were, in a way, his example of what love was. Their relationship had formed slowly, meandered around the usual obstacles of childhood and teenagedom, and taken its sweet time until it arrived at the conclusion that their love for each other was more than just friendship. Arrived too late, maybe; perhaps if Beverly had skipped over the (in hindsight) excruciatingly awkward period of time where she had wanted to date Bill, before she’d realised she liked the fantasy of him more than the reality, and that the reality was better as a friend, and gone straight into dating Ben instead, maybe they’d have had a little time together before they had to be split apart. Their faith in the strength of their bond made sense to Richie. He might joke, but he believed it too. He believed that they would both go four years and never meet anyone they loved as much as each other, and then they would reunite and get married. 

That Beverly was so certain and Richie was filled with so many doubts about Eddie was comforting, in the way knowing you had failed completely and would not have to make yourself try hard and risk failure again was comforting. Having your worst fears confirmed felt like a victory because at least you were right about something, even if what you were right about was your own failure. If he had this many doubts about Eddie then well, it couldn’t be real love. And it definitely wouldn’t last four years. 

“We’re just all… Leaving, you know?” Richie said.

Beverly threw her arms around his shoulders and hugged him, the scent of lake water and suntan lotion clinging to her. 

“It’s not going to be forever,” she said, confidently, before they got out of the car and went to rejoin the others. She didn’t know how right she was.

_ Enjoy it while you can _ , he kept telling himself. Like Ben said, being an asshole wouldn’t make them miss him less. They would, aggravatingly, miss him either way. Maybe there was no point in making them all miserable before he finally left. If they ever looked back when they were like, forty or whatever, if they remembered the shit they were doing when they were eighteen, maybe they’d have fond memories of him.

At the end of the day he drove Eddie home, Eddie sprawled in the passenger seat with his hair a nightmare from the towel-dry, sitting with his sneakers up on the dash of Richie’s car, humming along to the radio. His freckles were really starting to come out now, his skin tanned and glowing. God, he looked so beautiful sometimes it made Richie crazy. 

“My Mom won’t be home for ages, come inside,” Eddie said when they reached his house.

Richie complied, following Eddie inside, the first time he’d been there in daylight in a long time. The house was crowded with knick-knacks and junk, and had a strong chemical smell of cleaner hanging over it. Without Mrs Kasbrak there watching her stories the house was oddly quiet, and he was glad when Eddie turned on MTV so  _ Ren & Stimpy  _ could scream incoherently into the silence while the two of them went into the kitchen to get something to eat. Food in the Kaspbrak’s house was a very pre-packaged affair; Richie wouldn’t have said his family were known for their cooking either, but just about everything you could find in Sonia’s kitchen came sealed and factory-made. Eddie thought that she found something comforting about standardisation. As an eighteen-year-old, none of this struck Richie as being a particular problem. He’d probably eat a hell of a lot more microwave food if he was allowed. Digging around in the freezer he moved aside a Lean Cuisine and spotted his prize.

“Holy fuck. Kid Cuisine? Fuck yes, Eddie Spaghetti, this is fine dining,” he said.

“Oh my God. Really?” Eddie wrinkled his nose at the cartoon animals on the box. “You can’t be serious.”

“Serious as cancer. Your Mom has the right idea about something for once. I’ll have to tell her I approve of her grocery shopping next time we’re in bed.”

“Shut the fuck up! Are you ever going to get sick of that fucking joke?”

“Never ever. You want pizza or chicken nuggets?”

Eddie sighed. “Chicken nuggets.”

They ate in front of the TV. Unsurprisingly, a kids’ meal wasn’t exactly filling, but there was a pint of ice cream in the freezer and they ate it out of the carton, watching  _ Family Feud _ and shouting out the most obscene answers they could think of. At one point, Eddie’s head lolled over and came to rest on Richie’s shoulder and it would have been really easy to let it stay there, like it had a million times before, but that shame and guilt sprung up inside Richie again and he shrugged Eddie off his shoulder.

“What?” Eddie said.

“We can’t like, fucking  _ cuddle _ , man.”

“Alright, I won’t touch you.” Eddie’s voice was clipped and offended.

Eddie crossed his arms tight over his chest and stared at the TV. Every now and again his eyes would flick to Richie, but he never said anything. Richie’s leg was jigging like it was attached to a motor, and he couldn’t get it to calm down. Don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up, don’t fuck it up.

“I don’t get why you wanna do that crap anyway,” Richie said, fucking it up, “if you’re not gay. I wouldn’t be gay if I could. I’d be out there pounding puss like a fuckin’ champ. But I -- I don’t know, I drank too much fluoride or played with a doll as a kid, so I’m stuck like this now. And it fucking sucks. So stop, like, pretending.”

He expected Eddie to be angry but Eddie’s face was twisted up with what looked like pity, which was worse. Definitely worse. 

“I don’t want to be the guy you like, pity cuddle before you go home to your wife and kids,” Richie said.

“You won’t be,” Eddie said.

“Yeah. I won’t.”

Eddie didn’t have a chance to ask what the fuck he meant because there was the sound of a car parking outside and he leapt up off the sofa, darting across the room to go look out the window. He hissed under his breath.

“Mom’s back, you better go,” he said. “We’ll talk later.”

Richie didn’t say anything, just raced for the back door and let himself out into the yard, creeping around the side of the house to wait for the coast to be clear. Sonia Kaspbrak had climbed out of her car and was stood in front of Richie's hatchback like it was a personal affront to her. Did she recognise it? No, there were a thousand cars that looked like his. She  _ couldn’t  _ know it. He stayed crouched by the side of the house out of sight, and as she stormed past him and threw open the front door, he came to the horrible realisation that he was not as lucky as he would like to be.

Through the window over his head Richie was getting a pretty good earful of everything happening inside. He could have run away but he remained tensed in fear, scared of what was about to happen to Eddie. If he took Eddie with him, he could save Eddie from all this. 

"Where is he?" Sonia's voice rang out.

"Where's who, Momma?" Eddie's voice took on a different tone when he spoke to his mother, higher and softer, like he was trying to diffuse his age and rebellion, make himself something meeker and more suited to her palate.

"I'm not a fool, Eddie, I saw that little deviant's car outside. I know he's here, even after I told you, even after I  _ begged _ you. All I want to do is keep you safe but all you want to do is undermine me by hurting yourself!"

As she talked she was pacing about, her shadow falling over the window several times as she passed it, Richie still crouched out of sight and flinching every time he felt there was a risk of her seeing him. Eddie was invisible, hidden too far out of sight, drowned out by his mother's presence.

"He's my friend--"

"I don't want to hear it! I've told you and I've told you, he isn't  _ safe _ .  _ Those  _ kinds aren't safe. I see what they say on the news. You hear about all the diseases and the--"

"Mom, stop it! He's just… He's just a kid, and that stuff about him isn’t true. And even if it was,  _ I’m _ not one of those.”

“You promise me, Eddie? You  _ promise  _ me right now you aren’t doing anything that would make me worry. You know I worry about you  _ so  _ much.”

Richie had heard enough. He made his escape and ran to the car; inside he glanced over at the Kaspbrak’s house, but the front door was shut now and Sonia was too caught up in her performative hysterics to notice that he was leaving. The idea of saving Eddie from this occured to Richie again, but he thought about the medication Eddie kept taking even when he knew it didn’t work, even when his mother wasn’t there to see if he took it or not. 

Going back to his parents’ house always felt risky. For some reason, ever since he’d walked in and found out they’d thrown out everything he loved, he got a jolt of anxiety every time he came back.  _ Truly an army of psychologists wouldn’t be able to work out why _ , he thought bitterly as he let himself in with a key he was always privately happy still worked. Inside, his mother was standing by the phone and watching the front door like a hawk. Richie stood in the doorway and felt like the mouse the hawk had in her sights. He was going to spirit himself back upstairs and stay away from everyone, but horror of all horrors, Maggie came out into the hallway to talk to him before he’d managed to get up four steps.

“Where have you been?” She said.

“Out,” he said.

“I want to talk to you,” she said.

“Do I have to stay here and listen, or can you just start talking while I go up to my room? What’s left of it.”

Maggie crossed her arms. There was something in the way she looked when she was annoyed that Richie felt was very like the way  _ he _ looked when he was annoyed. He disliked that. 

“You’ve always hidden things from us. Always. When you were a little boy you’d have your little schemes and secrets. I never knew why, but you never trusted us. Even now, you won’t tell us what’s going on. You never wanted our help. You never wanted our advice. You just made up your mind.” 

Richie didn’t want to listen to this, but as much as he twisted his feet against the stair carpet he couldn’t get himself to leave. As angry as he was, there was a part of him that felt very beholden to his mother, even now. 

“I know you’re taking all your money so you can move away,” Maggie said.

“I told you that was what I wanted,” Richie said.

“And you never wanted to think about what you’d do if you failed, or if you didn’t make enough to support yourself. All we ever wanted was to keep you safe.”

“Oh, and what do you want now?”

“I don’t know. It feels like it’s too late not to lose you. I just hope you know that we’re still going to be here afterwards.” 

“After I fail? Thanks, Mom.”

“I wish I understood you. I never did.”

“I wish you did too.”

Maggie wasn’t a woman who yelled -- no one in the Tozier household ever yelled, which was probably why Richie’s loud mouth and melodrama was such an intrusion -- but she looked like she was rethinking it. She put a hand over her eyes to calm herself down. 

_ She doesn’t even want to see me _ , he thought bitterly. 

“Then why won’t you tell us anything?” She said. 

“You wouldn’t get it even if I did.”

“I just… Who made you this condescending? Who made you this morally righteous? That you get to be the arbitrator and judge of what everyone else  _ understands _ ?”

Richie laughed, even though it wasn’t funny.

“I mean logically, I guess I got it from you or Dad, so you can argue it out between yourselves. I’m going to go take a shower. I need to get off all the drugs and sweat from all the secret orgies I’ve been going to.”

He ran away then, locking himself in the bathroom and jumping into the shower to wash the last of the quarry off him. He didn’t go back downstairs until after he was sure his parents had gone to bed, moving around the silent house like a ghost, not turning on the lights or leaving any trail, scared of being cornered again by his mother’s prying questions. When he got down to the kitchen he grabbed the phone, stretching the cord taut as he pulled it as far as he could to hide against the far wall, away from the doorway. He didn’t want to risk being overheard, even though he thought his father’s snoring would probably drown out his whispering.

Eddie answered after a few seconds. Richie thought about how they hadn’t arranged a call, but Eddie was there, waiting anyway. As if he’d just known to expect it.

“Hey,” Eddie’s voice was soft and low too; Richie could picture him glancing around, not wanting Sonia to hear him on the phone after curfew, talking to one of his little  _ deviant  _ friends.

“Hey,” Richie said. “You ok?”

“Yeah, of course. Are you?”

“Nothing ever gets  _ me _ down, Eddie Spaghetti, you know that. I’m the indestructible man.”

“Yeah, sure you are. Tell that to the time you broke your arm in sixth grade. You cried so hard you made yourself puke.”

“That’s different. You’ve never broken a bone, you wouldn’t understand.”

Eddie snorted with laughter. His voice was soft and breathy, and Richie wished they were having this conversation back in the hotel in Provincetown, the way they’d talked every night, the blanket pulled up over their head, whispering and giggling like kids playing at camp. The whole thing had been playing, really. Playing at being free, at having another life. 

“I’m sorry I ran away when your mom got home,” Richie said.

“Don’t be stupid, I told you to leave. Did you… Did you hear any of what I said?”

“Yeah.”

“I have to tell her that stuff. She… Worries.”

“Yeah, she said so. I just don’t want you to be mad I like, left you with her.”

“I’m not. I’m used to her.” Eddie sighed. “Sometimes I feel like even if I leave her behind, I’m never going to leave her behind. You know?”

“Not really,” he lied.

“Nevermind. It’s stupid. Don’t worry about leaving me with her, anyway. She’s crazy, but she’s my Mom. She’s just looking out for me, even if half the stuff she thinks is nuts.”

“You’re going to be ok with her, then?”

“Yeah. I’m always fine here. Just fine, forever. No broken bones.” The way he said it made it sound as though ‘fine’ was worse than any pain. Maybe it was. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Diplomat's Son by Vampire Weekend
> 
> if you want to read something funnier here's my way sillier new one shot [I Hate the Losers Club: Testimonials](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22212451).
> 
> Richie thinks he knows what's best. I sort of can't blame him for thinking hey, the best thing to do is just to get over this crush, but... Maybe he isn't really on the same page with Eddie as much as he thinks he is. Too little too late really, though.
> 
> Kind of integral differences from canon in this are that Eddie has never either broken a bone or been forced into confrontation, and Richie hasn't been presented with a need great enough that it will stop him from running away (like Beverly or Eddie being in danger, or Stan's death). Eddie, while he knows he isn't 'sick' is still far too afraid of pain and breaking routine to do anything truly risky because he's never had to actually deal with consequences before. And Richie has never proven to himself that he's capable of being a hero; he still largely thinks of himself as a fuck-up and he doesn't enjoy being himself. 
> 
> I bring it up because we look at canon and see a lot that it was forgetting the development they had at the end of the first movie/first half of the book that made them repeat themselves, but in this it's more a case of them never being challenged at all. Eddie can see that there are things in his world that don't make sense and things he can do differently, but he's still too scared to. Richie doesn't think he can affect anything or be a meaningful presence or hero in anyone's life. 
> 
> Those are words that I thought and wrote here, for you to see. You're welcome. Anyway goodnight I love you.


	12. 1994: some things you do just to see how bad they'll make you feel

Life had taken on the unstructured freedom of summer very quickly for the others, but Richie tied himself down with work. He worked more than any of the others, and the money in his stash grew. Too much to keep it in the shoebox; he ended up taking his tips to the bank, watching his meagre account balance rise. Felt good, actually. Like real, grown-up money. Paying the rent every month money. The shoebox under his bed stayed put, with its alcohol, dirty magazines, knife, and the photograph of him and Eddie. He was intending to take it with him, but he had stopped looking at it. It hurt to look at; it felt faintly embarrassing now, like looking at a portrait he’d drawn as a child but his parents insisted on keeping up on the fridge. 

"I am so glad it’s  _ summer _ !" Beverly announced, throwing her arms wide and spraying half her bottle of whatever vile flavoured wine cooler she was drinking over the Denbrough's backyard. She was sitting on Mike's shoulders, who was watching her with a mixture of entertainment and concern. "I want the  _ sun _ , I want to be  _ free _ , I want to go  _ swimming  _ every day…" She took a pause in her speech to take a drink.

"And to get wasted every night?" Richie offered.

"There's gonna be time for that in college," Bev said, scoldingly. She was a little tipsy. "Although I am open to the idea for tonight. But I want to do everything Derry has! I want to go to the fair, I want to run around the Barrens, I want to…"

She tipped off Mike's shoulders and hit the sandpit, a cloud of sand bursting up around her like she'd cannonballed into a pool, the seven of them exploding with laughter. She sat up, shaking sand out her hair, pulling a furious face at Mike, who darted away to hide behind Bill in fake fear, crouching and not even remotely hidden from view.

"Bill can't protect you from me," Beverly warned. "I'll get you back, Mikey."

"Big Bill can protect me from anything," Mike said. 

Bill slung an arm around Mike's shoulders, something he could really only do when Mike was bent double, and defensively hugged him close. Richie, sitting on the swingset, tossed half a Twinkie at Bill's head, the cake bouncing off and leaving a smear of cream on his brown hair, which struck Beverly as being just about the funniest thing she'd ever seen, howling with laughter. Ben went over to help her out of the sandpit. 

They were 'partying'. Not partying in the way Richie had gotten really into last fall, but partying the way Losers did it. In someone's house while their parents were out, drinking whatever the fuck they could liberate from their houses, listening to music and laughing until they were sick. Last year Richie would have complained that this was incredibly lame, and that by all rights they should be having a cool, adult party, now they were adults. That they should be crashing Tammy Roberts' party, or something. But the older and wiser Richie of 1994 just wanted to spend some time with his friends. There wasn't much of it left. Beverly was leaving in a couple of months; so were Stan and Ben. 

Richie wanted to be gone before them. No reason other than he was selfish, and that seeing everyone drift away one by one would hurt more than ripping the band-aid off. Every morning he woke up in Derry he did so with the understanding that every day could be his last. He could leave at any minute and be gone. Just like that. Like a balloon on a high wind, just drifting away. It was something that filled him with mourning as much as it did exhilaration. Eddie wandered back out into the yard from house, where he had darted away to take a leak and do the routine is-Georgie-still-in-bed-and-asleep check that Bill insisted had to be done roughly once every ten seconds (hour or so).

Stan, who had been sitting on the other swing next to Richie, jumped up suddenly.

"Richie, come help me get more music," he said. Richie glanced at the stack of tapes that was next to the boombox they had balanced on the cold grill and was currently working its way through a Backstreet Boys album at a non-neighbourhood annoying level, but followed Stan back into the house anyway. He made sure to noogie Eddie on the way past him, something he received a slap on the back of the head for but felt worth it.

Inside the house Stan stood in the living room and waited as Richie rifled through Bill's frankly unimpressive album collection until Richie noticed he was getting no help, and that it was likely that Stan didn't care about the music at all. Ah, a cunning ruse. Richie waited for him to say something, pretending to read the tracklist on the back of a Led Zeppelin cassette.

"No one else has really figured it out, and I guess you don't want to say anything, and that's fine. But I want you to know if you did ever want to tell us, it wouldn't change anything," Stan said.

Richie froze.

"What are you talking about?" He said.

"Yeah, I didn't think you'd want to like, say anything. And that's fine. But I don't want you leaving here thinking we're all going to hate you. You're one of us forever, and nothing will change that. Ok?"

Lying felt pointless. Richie dropped the tape back onto the pile and shoved his hands into his pockets, finding it very hard to look at Stan. When he did glance at his friend, nervously, Stan just looked calm. There was a lack of drama about the proceedings that Richie appreciated, weirdly. 

"How did you figure it out?" Richie said.

"I always kind of knew. Like, the way you were around guys and girls was never the same. And that whole thing with Ruth really just felt like the worst ever. But mostly because I caught you and Eddie making out in the toilet," Stan said. "Twice."

"That would probably do it, yeah. I didn't think you actually… Saw."

"I didn't get a front seat to all the action, but it was kind of easy to tell."

Richie shuffled his feet on the carpet.

"You know Eddie isn't gay. He told me."

Stan thought about this solemnly, pale eyes holding on Richie calmly. 

"I guess if he says he isn't, then he's not," Stan said. 

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Can I ask what the deal is with you two?"

"We're bestest buddies for life. Also, sometimes we touch dicks."

"I really wish I hadn't asked."

"I don't know what you expected."

Stan snickered, and the laughter made Richie feel a little better. He liked making his friends laugh. Made him feel like he was worth a damn. 

"Stan. Can I ask you a question?"

"Yeah."

"If you were in love with someone, and you knew they weren't interested, would you think it was a good idea to move in with them?"

Stan's face dropped, which said everything it needed to say all on its own. Richie laughed, once, but Stan didn't join in. Once again, he thought about how when Stan took something seriously, it felt a hell of a lot more real than when it was just him and the horrible voice in the back of his head that interrogated his every thought until he was exhausted with the toll of thinking anything. It was kind of gratifying, having his worst fears confirmed, not having to argue with them anymore.

"I think that would probably be really hard," Stan said. "I think it might be better to not live with them."

"Even if it hurts? Even if it hurts so bad you think you're going crazy?"

"Nothing… Lasts forever."

Richie sighed and nodded his head.

"Richie don't…" Stan said. "Don't leave Eddie behind. You'd really hurt him."

"Nothing lasts forever, right?"

Stan opened his mouth wordlessly, but he didn't have time to argue before Richie grabbed a random handful of tapes and walked back out into the yard to meet up with the others again. As soon as he walked out the door Eddie yelled  _ think fast! _ and bowled a zebra cake at him, which hit him directly in the face and made everyone else screech. Richie proceeded to make Eddie yell with anger by picking it up off the ground and eating it anyway. Stan trailed out after him, but neither of them said anything about the conversation they had just had.

* * *

It was a wet evening when he drove to Bangor and turned up at the bar that had the poster advertising its open mic comedy nights in the window, the spring air cool enough that he had to keep his hoodie zipped up. He had bought a fake ID from another one of the guys who delivered pizza, so getting into a bar wasn’t a difficulty this time. It was pretty convincing, Richie thought. Had a photo of him and everything. He was tall enough that he mostly passed for over eighteen, especially with his alarmingly prominent cheekbones meaning he didn’t have much puppy fat to speak of. When he slipped inside, no one really gave him a second glance, not that he expected them to. 

There was a guy on stage with a badly tuned guitar that was singing comedy songs out of tune, so Richie’s expectations for the evening were low. That was probably for the best, though; that way he’d either blow everyone’s minds or not be alone when he failed completely. Both were equally good outcomes; Richie didn't have the confidence to think he was going to blow the minds of everyone there the first time he got on stage. He wasn't  _ that _ egotistical.

He waited for his turn with the calm and grace of a wind-up mouse running repeatedly into a wall and flipping over. He couldn’t stop fucking around with the note cards he’d brought with him, and his mouth tasted like ash. He chugged about a gallon of water and then became irrationally scared he would piss his pants for the first time since he was six (too much soda in the middle of the night incident) and ran for the men’s room with a desperation like he was going to miss his spot if he was gone for more than exactly eight seconds. By the time it was his turn he was looking more uncool than he ever had in his entire life and felt like he looked so obviously like a gawkish, nerdy high schooler, dressed in a semi-ironic band shirt that they'd throw him off the stage the second he walked out. He was sweating and was sure he was pale and shiny with fear when he stepped into the admittedly not-even-particularly-bright lights on the stage.

Richie twisted the mic. There were maybe thirty people around. Fuck. Ok. That wasn’t much more than most of his classes, and he’d sure as fuck put on enough shows for that crowd. Most of the people around were definitely a lot older than him, but he’d expected that. He swallowed hard.

“Hi,” he said, surprised at the sound of his own voice. “So, uh, my name is Richie. People call me, um, Trashmouth, probably because I talk too much and say way too much gross shit. But I just think they don’t really… Uh, appreciate my humour.”

He felt like his soul was being squeezed out of his body like he was a lemon in a juicer. Of course he was going to die on his ass. It was his first time on stage. Embrace it, Richie. Work through the failure.

“I graduated, uh, a few years ago. I started out school being good at it and ended up being really bad at it. I don’t think school is meant to make you stupider, but that was really my experience.”

He hadn’t told any of his friends about this on purpose, but in that moment he longed for their company. He knew if he had brought them, they would be wildly clapping and cheering even when he wasn’t funny, even if they didn’t find him funny, just because they wanted to be on his side. But that was also the exact reason he hadn’t brought them; there had to be a world outside of  _ just them _ , he needed to see and believe that they were other people who would support him if -- when -- he left them all behind. Because he was going to leave them behind. It was no longer a question, only a matter of time.

“School is kind of like… Do any of you guys even remember school? You’re all giving me these blank stares and either you’re all too old or too drunk to remember that far back.” A couple of people actually chuckled. “Ok, forget school. This is my first time doing stand up, alright? I’m making this up as I go. We’re starting over.”

That earned him some slightly endeared laughs. 

“I started dating this girl, and she thinks I’m obsessed with sex. And I mean, I’m a healthy young man, I’m not gonna pretend I don’t  _ ever  _ think about sex, but she thinks if she turns her back on me in a store I’m going to start jacking off to the girl on the Minute Maid carton. It’s not even my fault, it’s just that my freak friends named my car ‘the Dickmobile’.” He was starting to get more confident, get more into the swing of what he was saying. “Like the second she heard ‘I’ll pick you up in the Dickmobile’ she started reading sex into everything I was doing. Maybe this whole thing is a cover? Like, girls aren’t allowed to be horny so now she’s making  _ me _ horny so she has an excuse? Ok, whoa, when I say she’s making me horny, I didn’t mean like that.”

There was genuine laughter then and the sensation of it made Richie feel elated; he’d done it. He’d really fucking done it. Sure, the story was entirely bullshit, but that didn’t matter. He was making people laugh. 

When his time was up he was dizzy walking back out into the bar. He thought he might actually pass out so he went over to the bar to get himself something to drink when someone at one of the tables waved him over. He collected the beer he ordered and nervously wobbled his way over to the table at the side of the room. Of the group, he’d already seen one give their five minutes, and another of them was getting up to go and talk. She smiled at Richie as she passed, which was probably just polite but was friendly enough that it only added to the feeling like he was floating on air.

The people around the table were probably all in their early twenties, and Richie felt an instinctive desire to want to impress them and to play it cool. He doubted that they hadn’t noticed he was younger than them, but if they’d invited him over then maybe they liked him? Unless this was all some horrible joke… Richie’s fingers tensed around the bottle in his hand while he waited by an empty chair.

“Sit down, dude,” one of the guys said. “I’m Dave.”

They were a group of students in their final year at the University of Maine, it turned out. They came out to do stand-up regularly, something Richie would have found out if he’d risked coming to one of the open mic nights sooner. He wondered how different things would be if he’d wasted less of his own time and had just tried to do stand-up instead of fantasising about it. All those nights of dreaming about being the comedians on TV, the maddening puzzle of how you got to be them, and the answer was boots on the ground. Get to work. 

Dave and his friends were nice. They sussed out immediately that Richie was eighteen and so fresh out of high school that his locker wasn’t even cold yet, and the four of them took on a jovial older sibling-like attitude with him, cajoling him about making good choices in a way that felt distinctly less condescending than when his parents or teachers did it. Richie knew he wanted their approval, was dashing out the jokes as quickly as possible and watching each of them eagerly, but they all seemed endeared rather than annoyed by this. 

“You’ve definitely got potential,” Dave said, cheerfully. “I’d know. You see some real fucking sad shit in here. Dudes who get told they’re the funniest guys in the office so they think they can make it?”

“Talk about sad, you should have seen Dave’s first show,” Dave’s girlfriend Jess said, smirking at Richie in a way that made him feel less like an intruder and more like part of the group.

“Ha ha. My first show was  _ great _ . But really, Rich, you need to keep coming to these open-mic nights. You could be really good. That stuff about the girlfriend was really funny, you should keep that up.”

Richie tried not to be too obviously pleased. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m moving to LA soon, though.”

“Oh, for college?” One of the others said.

“Fuck no, there’s no way I’m getting into any college. No, I’m going to get famous,” he said.

The group laughed, but not unkindly. It was more in awe of him, almost;  _ look at this fucking kid, he really thinks he can make it!  _

And he would. He would make it.

“You have a place you’re staying at?” Jess said. “My brother lives in LA. You could definitely crash with him for a while.”

“No, I don’t. That would be fucking awesome.” Holy shit. Holy shit. 

“Your girlfriend doesn’t care that you’re moving?” Someone else asked.

“No. I gotta be free, baby, I gotta spread my wings,” Richie said. 

The others laughed. Jess scrawled her brother’s number on a napkin. Holy fucking shit. By the time Richie left the bar he could have been dancing, he could have been flying. It felt like definite, irrevocable proof, at last, both that he could make it, and that the problems and fears of Derry were not important. He would make other friends and meet other people, leave all this shit behind him forever. He was going to live through leaving them all behind. He was going to be ok. Driving back into Derry in the middle of the night, he couldn’t stop thinking about how this could be the last time he ever drove back home at all -- and God, he wished it was.

* * *

Every day Richie woke up and thought  _ maybe this will be the last day _ but somehow he was still surprised when it was. When he woke up on a Saturday morning that May, right before the year rolled into June, he wondered if it was going to be the last time he woke up in that bed. If he had known, maybe he would have taken longer to get up, spent more time committing the moment to memory. Would have thought about the way the light from the window formed shapes on the ceiling because of the shadow of the crossbar, thought more about the slight unevenness of the floorboards under his feet, the curve in the middle of his bed that marked the way his body had lied for years and proved that he had existed in this place. 

But, leaving for his shift at the hardware store, he was unaware of all of that. He just got up, ate a hot pocket for breakfast, and went to work. During work, Eddie came by for his lunch break, bringing a twenty pack of McDonald’s nuggets that they ate sitting on the hood of the Dickmobile. If Richie had known this was the last time they’d eat lunch together he’d have focused more on the little details; the fact the ice tea they were drinking was just a little too watery because Eddie had had to walk across town to get it to him and the ice had melted, the grit of the car hood under his hands when he leaned back, the exact joke he told that made Eddie snort into his drink. It was a nice day, cool but clear, and for once Richie didn’t feel like he had to worry. He was happy to just take the time to talk to his friend.

Eddie hung around for a bit when Richie had to get back to work, leaning on the counter and talking to him in secret, snide comments when his manager wasn’t around. They giggled to themselves, Richie doing a rude impression of the other guys on the shift that had Eddie red-faced and trying not to laugh when the man himself popped out of the stockroom, talking in the same listless, stoned monotone that Richie had been imitating just a minute before. Eventually Richie’s manager told Eddie to move it, and Richie said he’d see him at Ben’s later; they were going to meet up there before they went to go see  _ The Crow  _ again at the cinema (Bill and Eddie had missed out the first time and were holding Richie and Bev personally responsible). That was the plan. It was the kind of small, fun evening out that Richie thought he was going to miss most. In future years, he wouldn’t remember what the movie was, but would foster an irrational dislike of  _ The Crow,  _ something about the movie making him faintly uneasy for reasons he wouldn’t understand. 

Richie got through the rest of his shift joking around with his coworker Betty, who was in her forties but always got a laugh out of his impressions, and was yelled at by his manager for wasting time, again. Neither of them were really people he would think about much after that day; he spared one brief thought about if Betty would remember how to fix the cash register without him when he was speeding down the highway that night, but forgot about it immediately after. He would have been surprised if he knew in twenty years time a retired Betty Croft would watch every episode of a TV show he presented, happy that the boy she had known had made it like he’d always dreamed. 

Richie spent the last half hour fucking around in the stockroom rearranging screws until he got the green light to bolt at 5 pm and did, racing out to the parking lot to jump into his car. He went by the sandwich place to get and consume a meatball sub at a speed considered dangerous to most humans, then stood outside it to smoke a cigarette and watch a group of kids playing baseball in an empty lot over the road. The kids were like, twelve, Richie thought, around the same age as when shit had gone crazy for him. He was distantly jealous of them the way he was jealous of anyone who seemed to be happier than he was; part of him wished he  _ was _ one of those kids, nothing on their minds but the next swing of the bat, their whole futures ahead of them with no idea what was or wasn’t possible.

They’d grow up and figure out how much everything is fucked up too, was the problem. No one was safe from that, not even the truly fucked-up like Henry Bowers.  _ Rain falls on the just and the unjust alike _ , Richie thought distantly. He would not remember this moment in the years to come; staring out across the road, a boy with glasses and shaggy brown hair noticed him and immediately began acting up, putting his hands behind his ears to make his glasses wiggle up and down, the light glinting off the lenses. Riche crooked a finger behind his ear to wiggle his glasses back and the kid crowed with laughter until he was pulled back into the game by his friends demanding he throw the damn ball already. Richie flicked the butt of his cigarette to the road and went back to the Dickmobile.

He was at a stop sign waiting for his turn when he spotted Belch Huggins and Patrick Hockstetter walking down the sidewalk past him. They noticed him sitting in the car and both elbowed each other, laughing about something. He flipped them off but they just laughed more and the interaction left a grain of worry in his gut, something to stress about like an anxious dog whining when it heard a sound at the door. His shoulders were tense even when he got to drive away, leaving his former bullies in the dirt. It was not something he would remember even an hour later, but it set the tone for the evening. 

Driving home he passed Eddie’s house and deliberately crawled by, looking out the window at the squat little building. As he did, he jumped when he suddenly noticed that Eddie was in one of the upper windows, looking out at him. It was a half-second, the kind of blink of an eye thing that no one should have thought about other than as a coincidence, but it haunted Richie. That moment of looking at each other, their eyes locked, the wide distressed stare in Eddie’s eyes… In his memory, the event took on almost religious significance; in years to come, he would not forget how vast Eddie’s eyes were in his pale face, the hollow look that he wore. It was impossible to tell because of the haze and warped perspective that came with memories how much he remembered was genuine and how much was just what he saw when he looked back, but it was true that at the time, sitting and staring at Eddie as his car drove by slow enough that Eddie could have run outside and jumped in before Richie reached the end of the block, Richie’s whole body went cold. At the time, he  _ did _ wonder why Eddie didn’t run out and join him; there was a chance, for certain. It was not a chance either of them took. 

It did occur to him then,  _ what if this is the last time I ever see Eddie _ , but even then the truth of what that meant did not sink in for some time. It was too horrible a thing for him to really absorb; he thought he understood, was prepared even, for what that would feel like, but like trying to imagine the pain of a broken bone when you have never fallen, imagination could not stretch to the physical reality of what it was. Richie could have stopped, but he just kept driving by, reaching the end of the block and taking the turn towards his house. He was going to get changed out of his uniform and then he was going to head over to Ben’s, maybe stop by Hannaford’s and buy some popcorn or something. He tried to think about that and not think about holding Eddie’s cold stare.

When he got back, the house was quiet, but that was what he expected. Richie had spent his childhood letting himself into an empty house and didn’t think anything of it. He already had a creeping feeling of unease on his spine, but it had been there for a while now, and he was waiting for it to go away. He took the stairs up to his room two at a time and opened the door to see his stash box, his secret stash box, sitting in the middle of his bed. If he hadn’t already been frozen to the bone, that would have been the last straw that dunked him in the icy waters that were opening up under the fragile reality of his life. He picked up the box as if there was a chance he would find the contents undisturbed, but it only took half a second’s glance to see the inside was in disarray. 

Standing in the doorway of his room, he turned his head a little and saw the door to his parents’ room was ajar. He found himself walking towards it before he’d even really made a decision to do so, his legs moving almost of their own accord. He was very aware of his own heartbeat, but it was slow, his body so cold it was like it was sluggish in his chest, unable to catch up. In a way it was for the best; when he pushed the door to his parents’ room open and saw them both inside, their conversation stopped with an abruptness that Richie knew all too well from high school gossip meant they were talking about him, he didn't panic.

“So, when you had little chats with Sonia Kaspbrak while me and Eds were away,” Richie said, recalling what his mother had told him weeks earlier, “what did she tell you?”

“That you were a homosexual and you’re warping Eddie’s innocent little mind,” Maggie Tozier said.

“Uh huh,” Richie said. “And what did you think?”

“We didn’t believe her, obviously, the woman is a lunatic,” Wentworth said. He still had his coat from the dental practice on, his name embroidered over his chest. 

“But you do believe her now,” Richie said.

“We found pornography in your room, Richard,” Maggie said. “What, was that just there as a joke? You were hiding it for a friend? We found alcohol. And a  _ knife _ .”

“Ok,” Richie said. 

“When were you going to tell us?”

“Never.”

“That’s how little you think of us? That we would throw you out for this?” Maggie’s face crumpled with a sadness that made Richie’s guts twist with guilt. As angry as he’d been with his parents for a while now, his mother being in visible pain instinctively hurt him, made him shrink back in their presence. The fact he was an adult now, taller and stronger than either of them, meant less than nothing; in the face of his mother’s sadness, he was a guilty child.

“We’re not going to  _ punish _ you for being gay. We just wish we’d known sooner,” Wentworth said.

In the guilt there was also, horribly, a spring of hope. Richie had never thought about what his parents would say if they knew other than that the idea terrified him; but now there was, for the first time, a small hope that perhaps…  _ Possibly _ … This was about to go better than the nightmares that had been tormenting him since he was fourteen years old. He shoved his hands into the bottom of his pockets and shuffled his feet on the carpet, trying to find a good thing to say now the grief of years spent hiding himself was throttling him.

“We just want to know if… If you’re sure this is what you want,” Maggie said.

“What?” Richie said, snapping his head back up to her and frowning deeply.

“You can’t be angry at us for being afraid for you,” his father said, eyes misty behind the bottle-bottom glasses that were mirrored by Richie’s. “It’s a  _ hard _ life, Richie, and a lonely one. These men who live like that, they’re in so much danger, they die young…” 

“If there’s a chance you’re not sure then… Maybe it would be better…” Maggie looked at her husband with a mutual sadness that made Richie want to puke. “If you didn’t.”

“We’re just  _ scared _ for you, you have to understand that. It’s… The world is already such a hard, cruel place, and you’d be making it so much harder for yourself,” Went continued.

The fact he’d allowed himself to have that moment of hope made it more painful when it was extinguished violently. Richie took a step away from them, shaking his head wordlessly. There was nothing he could imagine saying now; his mind was a blank, only the feeling of his heart thumping hard and loud in his ears making him feel violently sick. He took another step back but both his parents made to follow him out, their poisonous concern stretching out to him like the grasping tentacles of a jellyfish.

“Don’t run away, we need to talk about this,” his mother said. “We’re not angry with you.”

“We’re just scared.”

“ _ You’re  _ scared?” Richie said, choking out his words. 

“Of course we are, we love you. We’ve only ever wanted the best for you, even if you’ve never believed that.”

“Is it wrong of me to be worried about you being alone for the rest of your life? For me to want you to be happy?”

“I know you don’t trust us, but that just makes us more scared, Rich. You hear all this stuff in the news… I don’t want to think about you out there alone, not telling us what you’re doing, getting into trouble…”

“It just might be better, you’d be safer, if you were wrong.”

“I’m gonna be sick,” Richie said. 

He turned around to throw himself into the bathroom, stumbling over to the toilet and immediately hurling his lunch, propping himself up against the wall with a shaking hand. He was sweating and left a handprint on the cold tiled wall when he moved away from it, feverish and shivering. He tried to take a breath to calm himself down but his Dad started hammering on the bathroom door, making him flinch. He turned on the tap to throw cold water on his face.

“Richie, get out of there so we can  _ talk  _ to you. You can’t run away from this,” Maggie called through the wood.

“I don’t  _ want  _ to talk to you! I  _ never  _ wanted to talk to you about this!” Richie said, tap water trickling down his neck and soaking his shirt collar. 

“You’re not being fair. We’re allowed to have our say.”

He had to get out. All at once every muscle in his body and synapse in his brain linked up and there was no more doubt, no more wondering about when the right time to leave might be, no second-guessing himself. No more thinking it might be worth waiting for the next paycheck, or whatever excuse made him feel like the real reason he wasn’t leaving yet wasn't fear. There was no more staying here. He couldn’t look into his parents’ faces every day and know that they were thinking that he was going to die young, and that it would be his fault. 

He burst out of the toilet so suddenly it scared both his parents, shoving his father out of the way as he turned back towards his room. He had a bag in his closet and it wouldn’t take too long to cram some clothes into there. He didn’t need anything else. The box he could throw into the back of his car as is. His music, his books, the few things he had left his parents hadn’t sacrificed to their desire to force him into their mould… He could let them go. They weren’t important. No one ran back into their house during an earthquake to save their fucking Talking Heads CD, and if this wasn’t a natural disaster, Richie didn’t know how else to describe it.

“What are you doing?” Wentworth said.

“I’m going,” Richie said, his voice breathless, throat raw. 

“ _ Where _ ?” Went said.

“No. No, you aren’t running away. We’re going to sit down and we’re going to talk, like a  _ family _ ,” Maggie said.

Richie threw open the closet door and started grabbing things off the racks, cramming shirts and pants into the duffel bag he had, barely looking at what he was grabbing. Later on he would realise he’d forgotten to pick up any socks, had accidentally brought along the polo shirt he wore delivering pizza, had left his favourite pair of jeans. Silly mistakes, insignificant things, but for some reason it also wasn’t until he didn’t have the jeans, five days after packing, that he would be able to cry. In the moment he didn’t have time to cry. He was moving like the big quake was coming any minute, like every second he spent gathering his things was a second longer he was at risk. Went stood in the doorway of his room and stared at him, but Maggie followed him inside, her arms stiff by her sides.

When he turned to grab the box off the bed she grabbed it first.

“We are going to talk,” she said.

“No,” he said, every word a struggle, every bit of defiance agonisingly difficult, requiring him to drag up a strength from deep inside himself that he didn’t want to have to waste now, when he had so much further to go before he could rest. “We’re not.”

“I am your  _ mother _ .”

“Give me the box,  _ Mom _ .”

“No.”

He held his hand out but she hugged the box closer to her chest, something in her eyes wild with protective anger that Richie didn’t recognise. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her look so defiant, and he wondered why, if she’d had this strength in her all along, she’d never used it to protect him when he wanted her to. 

She thought he wouldn’t leave without the box. Wentwoth’s face was drawn, but Maggie’s was tense and focused. She was holding him hostage. Did she think he’d stay for the box? That he was so attached to it he’d do that? He understood then that if she thought he would stay for something so small, it was because she didn’t consider his desire to leave serious; it was a child’s whim, easy to manipulate or bribe. As if he was eight, threatening to run away forever and ever because he didn’t want to have to go to synagogue with his grandparents that Saturday, but could be talked down if she threatened to take away his baseball cards. She didn’t take him seriously at all. She might never.

“Fine,” he said. 

Her eyes went wide with shock but Richie just left his room, slamming himself into the doorframe to avoid having to touch his father, running downstairs so quickly he tripped over his own feet and nearly went sprawling across the hall, his bag painfully slamming into his back when he fell against the wall. 

“Rich, you have to stop this nonsense now,” Wentworth called after him, but his voice was afraid, not commanding, and Richie didn’t even spare him a glance. 

Richie was out the door and then he was running; his parents were yelling after him, both of them coming across the lawn after him, children desperately chasing after a ball, praying it wouldn’t fly over the fence. But he was free, he was going, he didn’t have boundaries and there was nothing holding him back. He was in his car and he was jamming his key in the ignition and he could see his parents had stopped on the sidewalk; they were both still yelling, his mother’s face streaked with shocked tears, but he didn’t stop. 

He was leaving. He was pulling out of his parking spot and accelerating too fast down the street, tires spraying water as he shot over the wet tarmac, his hands clenching the steering wheel too tightly. He couldn’t look back; his last view of his parents was in the rearview mirror, standing outside the house he’d never go back to, vanishing into the distance. 

* * *

Richie kept driving because he was scared if he stopped he wouldn’t be able to start again. He cleared the Kissing Bridge with so little ceremony that it hurt his heart; he should have had a going-away party, should have been able to say goodbye to the bridge, the quarry, the club house. He felt like he’d lost out, robbed of his rightful chance to lay everything to peace; he didn’t want to bury his childhood without a funeral, just sink his past into the earth and leave it all behind, a hit and run victim of a coming-of-age story. He drove out of Derry and kept going, the ironworks behind him becoming a sketch on the horizon until it was gone behind the trees and the farmlands, everything he had ever known being swallowed up by distance and time.

He could have just kept driving, his foot lead on the accelerator and his arms locked rigid holding onto the steering wheel, but the low gas warning on his car wasn’t something he could argue with. He pulled over at a gas station, his body thrumming with the pain of grief, feeling like he was ten miles outside of his own skin. He was looking down at the tousle-haired boy who was standing by the red car, pumping gas, his face pale and shiny with sweat, looking like he was on the verge of collapsing. The guy behind the counter was eyeing Richie with suspicion, but Richie was floating somewhere over the treeline and couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it. All he could do, when he approached the attendant to pay, was say:

“Do you have a phone?” His voice rough and hollow and sounding false to his own ears.

The attendant just pointed wordlessly at a payphone around the side of the station building. Richie went to it, jamming a few quarters left over from tips into the phone. He dialled one of the numbers he knew by heart, numbers he was sure he’d remember forever, his eyes fixed on graffiti carved into the side of the payphone but not really reading it, not really understanding what he was looking at.

The phone rang a couple of times before Ben’s mom answered, her voice so soft and warm; she was an incredibly kind person, prone to worrying and fussing as if they were much smaller children, something that Richie had found mildly irrationally irritating throughout most of his teens, even though he knew she meant well. At that point though, the gentleness of her voice saying hello made him tense up, shaking as he held the phone to his ear.

“Hi, Mrs Hanscom,” he said mournfully. “Is Ben there? It’s Richie.”

“Oh, Richie, sure. The whole gang’s here, they just got back from the movies.”

“Can, uh, can I talk to them?”

“Of course, sweetie.” There was a hesitation. “Are you alright?”

He wished very powerfully that he could tell her everything; there were no adults that Richie really trusted left in his life, and although he knew he was an adult, fought constantly for his right to be recognised as one, the child in him who had not yet realised it was time to let go, who was still crying he never got to say goodbye to inanimate places that had existed long before he was born and would exist long after he died, ached for comfort. His teeth were chattering with cold, and he didn’t really know why.

“I just need to tell him something. I’m fine.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand and waited as Mrs Hanscom called Ben over. 

There was some scuffling sounds and a minute later Ben’s voice, that deep, contemplative voice, took over the line. Richie could hear others in the background, the buzz of Beverly’s voice and the off-tempo beat of Bill’s stutter. 

“Richie?” He said. “What’s going on? You didn’t show and when we tried to call your Mom just hung up on us.”

Richie closed his eyes and tried to stop his breathing from being so shallow and panicked. When he spoke, his voice trembled.

“I gotta go,” he said. 

“You just called--”

“No, I mean, I gotta leave town. I’m going.”

“ _ You’re going? _ ”

There was an explosion of noise from the others, Bill demanding Ben put the phone on speaker until there was a click and Richie heard the sound in the room shift as more of them gathered around the receiver. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, his whole body wound so tight that he felt like he was going to snap, brittle and fragile as ice. 

He hadn’t even heard Eddie’s voice yet. He was scared of what would happen when he did.

“Richie, what do you mean going? Going where?” Beverly’s voice was clear as a bell and pitched up into sadness, and the guilt that Richie was feeling was so overwhelming that he nearly hung up there and then. 

“I’m going to LA,” he said. 

“That’s not the plan,” Eddie said. His voice was trembling and hearing it made Richie twist the phone so hard in his hands the plastic creaked. “We had a plan.”

“You can’t just go,” Mike said. 

“Do you even -- do you even have a map? Did you even pack?” Stan said.

“Why are y-yu-you d-d-doing th-thi-th…” Bill stopped and Richie could picture him, red in the face, trying to force the words out and not being able to. 

“I can’t go back. My parents kicked me out, I guess? I, uh, I…” Richie swallowed hard. He opened his eyes, staring at the graffiti. He was vaguely aware it said FRYING PAN but he didn’t like thinking about it. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”

“Come back,” Eddie said.

“I can’t. I just wanted to say goodbye.” 

“You can. You can come back. You can stay with one of us, until we’re ready to go.” Eddie was begging now, his voice louder and higher than everyone else’s, the shock and the betrayal so vivid it cut to the bone. Richie reminded himself of how much worse it would feel to watch Eddie slowly drift away, to drag out their relationship when it was always going to end with him being alone. He was going to be alone one way or the other. 

“You c-c-c-can st-stay with m-m-”

“You could stay with me, my Dad would understand, if you told him. You need more time to prepare, you can't just…"

“You can’t run away like this, Richie you have to come back.”

“I think this is a bad idea, Richie.”

“You could stay with me, you should come home, we can sort it out.”

“You  _ promised me _ .”

Richie swallowed, his head pounding. 

“I can’t,” he said. 

There was that same cacophony of voices as everyone started talking at once, arguing and yelling and begging, the sound ringing through Richie’s head like a bell announcing his failures far and wide. He profoundly aware of the fact he was letting them down, that he was failing to meet even the bottom line of what a good friend would do, but it was too late now to fix anything. He was breathing hard and shallow, every breath making him rattle, his whole body wound so tightly that he thought he was going to shatter into a million pieces. 

“Please,” Eddie said. “Richie, you said we were gonna go together, I know it’s my fault but please don’t--”

“Bye, Eds,” Richie said. 

Richie hung up.

He went back into the gas station to buy a map, not making eye contact as he shoved crumpled dollars over the counter. It was getting dark when he walked back to the car and hit the highway with a full tank of gas, and he didn’t stop driving until he saw the sun come up again. It was only then that he was able to accept that he was outside of Derry’s pull, that he had finally escaped the orbit of that world and was now launching himself across the dark space of something unknown. 

It was a long drive to California. The landscape of the world around him shifted constantly, becoming things unrecognisable and alien; fields where corn stretched as far as the eye could see, cities of vast, ugly skyscrapers soaked in rain, and huge, red deserts that burned angrily under the sun. He saw it all alone, and considered how he was both the only one who would ever see it like this, in this exact moment, for this exact purpose, but also one of hundreds of thousands who had seen it in nearly identical ways, the differences between the moments so small as to be imperceptible and meaningless. 

On the fifth day he held the wrong pair of pants, realising he would never see his favourites again, and cried as if he had just lost an old, good friend, someone he loved more dearly and deeply than even he had really ever understood. But he didn’t cry for his friends, and after that day, he didn’t cry at all. 

When he got to LA he called Jess’ brother and he said Richie could crash on his couch, and a few days after that he got a job working at a Tex Mex place. That paid enough that he could rent an actual room in an apartment he shared with a couple of other guys, then a few months later he got a job as a runner on a mind-numbing talk show, running across the city fetching coffee and cleaning the set. He kept doing stand-up and joined a sketch group, eventually switched out his job for being a runner on a sitcom that he actually liked. And then one day, after working his way up to being a production assistant, he eventually told the right person about his comedy, and the right guy came to his show, and one day Richie would end up on the right side of the camera. 

He grew older, finally filled out so his gangly, awkward limbs looked less like they were going to snap like twigs and more like they fitted him, stopped clean-shaving, got stronger glasses. He made new friends and sometimes got emails or phone calls from back home, old friends that he told about work and celebrity gossip and absolutely nothing substantial, but answering the emails always gave him the same sick, uncomfortable feeling that waking up next to a guy the morning after did, and eventually Richie stopped answering and people stopped sending emails and making phone calls. And, as he would say in one of his stand-up routines or occasionally, more insistently, when he had a few drinks in him; it did not matter at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is cry for judas by the mountain goats
> 
> i've been planning this since the start but actually writing it was... part of me kept wanting to go and write a scene where richie saw eddie in the flesh and they got to actually talk it out but it was pointed out to me by my long-suffering boyfriend that my drive to do that was essentially me being desperate to give the boys some closure... and that closure is the exact thing they can't have. sometimes you don't have time or the chance to plan; all you can do is pick up your bags and run.
> 
> the next chapter is an interval from eddie's pov so hopefully that will expand on some of what he was going through throughout the fic.


	13. 1989-1998: An Intermission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is from Eddie's perspective and will hopefully shed some light on some of the things he was thinking throughout the fic

### 1989 - June

“I’m not jumping,” Eddie said, staring over the edge of the quarry, down at the green waters where Beverly had already plunged and was now waiting below, floating on her back and staring up at the assembled boys. Stan and Bill were already racing after her, leaping out with a howl of freedom, but Eddie stayed rooted to the spot.

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Richie said. “Jump, or I’ll throw you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Eddie said.

Mistake. Dark, mischievous intent flashed over Richie’s face and he lunged at Eddie, slotting his arms under Eddie’s and lifting him off the ground. It wasn’t very high, Eddie’s toes still trailing in the dirt, but he screamed regardless, fists hammering on Richie’s shoulders. Richie managed to make it a single step before the twisting, upset ferret of a child in his arms that was Eddie Kaspbrak managed to escape, falling flat on his ass. 

“You’re such an asshole,” Eddie said, kicking Richie in the ankle. He could still feel Richie’s hands on his back even though he’d been unceremoniously dumped, and was burning so badly he thought he must be getting sunburn.

“Then why do you love me so much?” Richie retorted, running past Eddie and leaping off the edge, screaming at the top of his lungs as he dropped out of sight. 

The idea of jumping off still scared Eddie -- he had too many images in his head of broken bones and concussions to not feel nervous -- but if he didn’t take the plunge, Richie was going to leave him behind. He scrambled to his feet and chased after him, screeching like a wild animal the entire time he tumbled through the air, hitting the water with a splash and sinking like a stone.

When he surfaced, spluttering and trying to wipe water out of his eyes, Richie was a few feet away, laughing and waiting for him to catch up as Eddie tread water and tried to catch enough of his breath to feel ready to swim.

### 1991 - March

“It’s a charade that’s gone on long enough,” Mr Keene said. Eddie swallowed, but his throat was dry and aching. “You’re a perfectly healthy young man, Eddie. Your health is not what’s holding you back.”

That sentence didn’t make any sense. What… Was it if it wasn’t his health? Something _ was _ holding him back? Did anything have to be holding him back? It wasn’t his imagination making it hard for him to breathe, closing up his throat and chest when the panic set in. It wasn’t his imagination almost _ killing _him from asthma attacks… But if the cure was fake… 

“I think I need to go home,” Eddie said, grabbing his prescription off the counter. Fake or not, he couldn’t go home without it. 

His head was spinning when he rushed out onto the street, trying to process what the hell the creepy old pharmacist could be talking about. Was he trying to upset Eddie on purpose? But why would he do that? Eddie wasn’t crazy. He didn’t believe in magic, or insane fantasy medication. He was a normal kid who had asthma, and some other things, like a bad stomach and headaches and deficiencies in some vitamins and a sensitivity to getting ill… 

He didn’t know why he was so scared. His heart was pounding in his chest and Eddie found himself shakily stopping at the end of the sidewalk, sitting on the curb. He clutched the paper bag with his inhaler and his pills to his chest, as if they would be able to cure the racing in his mind. Unfortunate that there wasn’t a medicine that made your thoughts quieter. Sometimes Eddie thought the volume of the world could do with being turned down a few levels, but the only thing that ever seemed to help was the careful routine of taking his medication every day, making sure that he was as healthy as he could be.

No. He wasn’t crazy. And his mom wasn’t lying to him about everything. She loved him, even if she definitely was overbearing, and she was mean to all of his friends.

What was holding him back? If it wasn’t his health, what could be holding him back? If being weak wasn’t an immutable condition of living, then what was it? Was it just… Him?

### 1993 - November 

Eddie’s mom thought he was dying when he woke up and immediately ran to the bathroom to hurl, asking what could possibly be wrong with her poor little baby, did he have food poisoning, she knew she shouldn’t have let him out, was it the flu? He managed to convince her it was just a migraine, but that made her interrogate him about how often he had migraines and the possibilities of brain tumours, which had them both on edge. Anything about cancer freaked him out; too many memories of his Dad up all hours of the day and night, coughing until there was blood. Just thinking about it upset Eddie, and he knew he didn’t even actually _ have _ a migraine. But there was no fucking _ way _ he could tell his Mom he was hung over, or that he got drunk so that he… When he kissed… 

He needed to go out. If he spent all day in the house with his mother trying to play nursemaid he might go insane, he was pretty sure. Not that that wasn’t every fucking day of Eddie’s life, but he had enough problems at that moment. He called Richie first, but he was politely told that Richie was not going to be allowed out today by a very clipped and irritated sounding Mrs Tozier, so Eddie assumed Richie was dead, sacrificed for his crimes of partying. May he rest in peace. Eddie called Bev instead, who said they could go to Lou’s Diner and get hangover cures. 

His mother really did _ not _ want him to go out, tried to order him back to bed, but Eddie told her his headache had gone away and that the best thing was some fresh air. Sonia didn’t look so sure that he didn’t desperately need some medical attention, but he just sped out of the house as quickly as he could, biking down to town. The cold air actually did make him feel a little better and he was moderately less at death’s door when he got to the diner. Beverly was already inside, sitting at a booth and nursing a cup of black coffee. He was pretty sure she only drank it to look cool, but she _ did _ look cool. He slumped down in the seat opposite.

“First hangover?” She said.

“Second. Both thanks to Richie. Some friend,” Eddie said. First had been after Halloween, of course. This time was Richie's birthday. 

The waitress came over and Beverly ordered for him; bacon, eggs, toast, the works. Eddie grimaced; that was more food than he’d usually eat when he _ wasn’t _ feeling so puke-y but she told him with some authority that he needed carbs to soak up all the alcohol. She had more experience in these matters.

“Yeah, Richie needs to cool it a little. His liver will thank him,” Beverly said. “What did your mom say about your condition?”

“Oh, I told her I had a migraine, so now she thinks I have a brain tumour,” Eddie said. 

“Sounds about right.” Beverly finished her coffee and asked for another. Eddie decided to risk getting one for himself, though he put in plenty of creamer.

“How was your dad?” Eddie said.

Bev shrugged delicately. “He didn’t figure it out.”

It wasn’t obvious if she was telling the truth or not. Beverly was very good at downplaying things so much that they stopped seeming like issues at all, a calming tone that poured oil on troubled waters. Not that she was some saintly, motherly figure fixing all the problems of the silly boys she was surrounded by, but more like she had spent years of her life training herself in how to de-escalate situations and was now so good at it that it was very, very easy to forget sometimes things _ did _ matter.

The coffee tasted good but weird. Eddie added sugar. The waitress brought them both huge plates of greasy food and Beverly tore into the bacon with the enthusiasm of a starving lion. The amount of salt and calories in front of him made Eddie’s stomach churn and he stared unhappily at it, but followed Beverly’s advice and made an attempt to eat.

“It’s cool that you didn’t let your mom stop you from coming out,” Beverly said. 

“It’s not a big deal. She’s not that bad most of the time,” Eddie said. “I’m pretty good at getting out of stuff now.”

“Still.”

“Thanks, Bev.”

She flashed a grin and went back to turning her plate into a scene of complete carnage. It was nice that she got it. Got most things, at least. He had not told anyone yet that he had kissed Richie, kissed Richie a _ bunch _ of times and had every intention of doing so again. As soon as that thought crossed his mind he knew the decision had already been made for him, seemingly without needing his involvement. It was as if the universe was just telling him what was up. In the end he balked at telling Bev anything about it; it felt like it was giving away too much of Richie’s business, and he didn’t want her getting the wrong idea.

The food did make him feel better, though.

### 1993 - December

“We’re not _ anything! _” Richie said, the line between fear and anger so blurred that there was no difference at all, his terror making him turn like the proverbial mouse in the corner turning on the cat. But there was no cat in the room, only the two of them, both scared little mice in an endless maze, running circles around an experiment they didn’t know the purpose of. There was blood and bruises on his face, black in the poor moonlight coming through the kitchen window. His face, with its high cheekbones and thin cheeks, looked hauntingly skull-like. 

It was scary for Eddie to see Richie breaking down, to be in the position that he thought _ he _was always in. That was their dynamic; Eddie freaked out about something and Richie made fun, making Eddie forget about his fear, too caught up in fighting and arguing to care about whatever it was he’d been yelling about a moment before. It worked for them, the push and pull of taking care of each other, where Eddie tried to protect Richie from the threats he saw everywhere he looked, and Richie pulled him out of the spiralling fears of his own mind. Flipped the other way around, Eddie didn’t know what to do; he couldn’t crack jokes the way Richie did, come up with some stupid, obnoxious thing to say that had everyone groaning. His own chest was tight with fear and horror, and when he opened his mouth, the only thing that came out was a whining sob, like a stupid, useless baby, too afraid and too weak to do anything but hide himself and cry. He couldn’t protect Richie, he never could, and the enormity of his failure felt like a grief he would never be able to swallow down. 

His mom appeared in the doorway, woken up by the screaming and crying, and she spirited Richie away in a storm of unsympathetic rage. Eddie sat in the kitchen while she was gone, paralysed by guilt, and when she came back and started demanding answers he had none to give. He ended up crying until he hyperventilated and his mom panicked, driving him to the emergency room thinking he was dying. The nurse told them it was a panic attack, and predictably his mom kicked up a stink, but that just got them swiftly ejected by medical professionals who had much more important things to deal with than a furious mother who thought medication would fix her son’s every human mistake. 

He didn’t get a chance to see Richie again. His mother wasn’t letting him out of the house, and two days later they were going to his aunt’s home in Boston for Christmas. Eddie was condemned to spending five days crammed into the box room in the back of his aunt Ginny’s house, sharing the already cramped space with his weird cousin from Pennsylvania who only talked about true crime and ghosts. Spending almost a week with his aunts, uncles, grandparents, first and second cousins, all while knowing Richie was back in Maine, possibly hating him, was a kind of slow torture that should have been considered unethical. Eddie wanted to try and think about anything else but he couldn’t stop coming up with internal arguments, bickering with no one in a long monologue about what was or wasn’t his fault until the anxiety gave him a stomach ache that lasted two days. His mother told him it was eating too much rich food, not noticing Eddie hadn’t been eating much of anything at all. 

Several times he thought about calling Richie, but he knew Richie usually spent Christmas with his dad’s family -- who were ‘Methodists’, which meant absolutely nothing to Eddie, whose family was allegedly Catholic -- and didn’t have a number or anything for them. Eddie spent Christmas in a pit, both longing to go home and fearing what would happen when he did. He had recurring nightmares about movie monsters, werewolves and Frankensteins and mummies; obscene, ugly and inhuman, always on the periphery of his vision and grasping for him with talons that left dirty stains on his skin. 

By the time he was back home he had half-convinced himself that Richie would never speak to him again. It was a day later when Bill called him up and asked if he wanted to come hang out and hijack Georgie’s new SNES, and Eddie agreed automatically. When he got there, Richie was there too, lounging on the couch and comfortably arguing with Mike about comic books while Bev beat Bill at _ Super Mario Kart _. 

“Eddie, we get next turn,” Richie said. “I’m going to beat your ass.”

“Yeah, you will,” Eddie said. “Because you’re a nerd who spends all his time at the arcade, but I have a life.”

“I haven’t been at the arcade in months. You’re just being a sore loser before you even lost. Maybe you can make up new rules so you can say I’m cheating.”

“If you stopped cheating I wouldn’t have to get mad about it!”

It was so normal. It was like nothing had ever happened, even though Eddie could still see the faint yellowing bruises on Richie’s face Bowers had left that no one was acknowledging. All of Eddie’s anxieties and fears from the last week had no real resolution; everything they had gone through meant nothing at all, just swept under the rug like so much unsightly dust. With a sadness he didn’t really understand, Eddie realised that Richie probably didn’t take whatever it was they had that seriously at all. 

### 1994 - January-February

Ruth had been in many of Eddie’s classes throughout his career at Derry High, but he’d never really paid any attention to her. It wasn’t a malicious thing; they were just on different currents, drifting by in different social circles. He was under the impression she was kind of a stoner, smart but not motivated. If he’d been asked about her, he would have had nothing to say. He still didn’t really have anything to say about her when he heard that her and Richie were dating, but he sure as fuck had a lot to say about the realtionship.

“What does he see in her?” Eddie demanded one lunch break, watching Richie sit at _ Ruth’s _ table with _ Ruth’s _ friends.

“She’s pretty?” Beverly offered. Beverly didn’t like Ruth that much. Ruth thought it was weird for boys and girls to be friends.

“She’s n-nice?” Bill said. 

“That’s it?” Eddie said. “She’s not even Richie’s _ type _. This isn’t Richie, this is… Someone else.”

“I think Richie’s type is anyone who will be his girlfriend,” Stan said. 

There was no real reason for Eddie to be _ jealous _ , but that didn’t stop him. Richie was _ his _ best friend, and he’d dropped Eddie like it was nothing. Like Eddie was something he could just throw away to go and have a brand new life. The most infuriating part of it was that Richie didn’t even seem to know he was doing it; he would stumble back into meet-ups with the Losers Club, often with Ruth tagging along behind him, trying to brute force the same group dynamic as though nothing was happening. Ruth could be the nicest, prettiest person in the world, but that didn’t make her someone who’d been in the group for half a decade. She didn’t get their humour, and she didn’t know their stories. She gave Beverly weird looks and pulled faces at Stan’s sarcasm, didn’t laugh at Richie’s jokes and got pissed off at Eddie’s tirades. 

“Chill out,” she’d tell him, so often that it was like nails on a chalkboard. Eddie didn’t care about that, really. He didn’t care about _ her _. She wasn’t a blip on the radar of his life, but he hated the way she’d tell him to buzz off and Richie would say nothing. He hadn’t only gotten a girlfriend, it was as though he’d sold all his human connections along with it. 

They weren’t fooling around together anymore either, but Eddie could live with that. He would be fine with never kissing Richie again, as long as it meant he _ had _Richie. Right now he didn’t have anything at all, because Richie was making himself not exist. Eddie’s best friend was taking apart every aspect of himself and trying to hide it away to something more tasteful to an audience that had never and would never appreciate Richie Tozier. Not the way Eddie did.

He was so angry it hurt, so angry that even his mom noticed it, even his teachers noticed it. The only person who didn’t notice was _ Richie _. Eddie vented to Mike about it one morning as they walked to the library, spilling out his bitterness and his feelings of neglect as Mike listened with pained sympathy. 

“I don’t know why she’s so fucking special!” Eddie said. “He doesn’t get what he’s done at _ all, _ it’s like he gave up all his brain cells to get a girlfriend. Why the fuck did he even want a girlfriend? None of this is _ him _ . He’s pretending he’s someone he’s not, and what are we supposed to do? I _ liked _ Richie the way he _ was _.”

It was a quiet wintery morning and Eddie felt comfortable letting the silence settle over them as they walked. Mike clearly had something on his mind but he was thinking it through, face thoughtful as he watched the birds overhead shooting through the sky. Pigeons mostly; nothing beautiful or rare, not in Derry. Eddie didn’t mind them, though. He’d seen some of Stan’s bird photography, and thought the way the pigeons looked in those could be beautiful, with their subtly shifting colours and the way the light refracted through their feathers. He didn’t know how to feel about that, seeing something ugly and thinking there was something nice in it. They were rats with wings, after all, dirty and unclean. He knew that. But the pictures were nice; the idea of them was nice. 

He had his SATs soon, but there was also spring break, and maybe something fun would happen. The Losers were good at finding something to do, even when everything seemed miserably pointless. And it _ did _all feel kind of pointless at that moment; Eddie was spending a lot of nights staring at the wall and wondering why he bothered to wake up in the morning. Little moments just walking down the road with his friend made it easier, though. It was something to enjoy.

“Problem with a small town like this,” Mike said, “no privacy.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Guess that’s why Richie wanted a girlfriend, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“So everyone would know.”

Eddie had considered that, but the fact that Mike had also picked up on it made him feel somewhat embarrassed. He risked a question he didn’t generally like to think too much about. 

“Do you think he’s gay?” Eddie said, cautiously.

“I don’t think that’s any of my business, mostly. But not really? He would have told us,” Mike said. “But I think everyone giving you shit for it is tough either way.”

“I guess so. Yeah.” Eddie wondered if Richie _ would _tell them. He didn’t know if Richie was gay or not. He tried not to think about it; there was a hell of a lot tied to the word that made it mean more than who you wanted to date. It scared him, really.

Richie did tell him, in the end. And it did scare him; Richie grimly accepted his sexuality like it was a burden, and that frightened Eddie too. There was an awful sense that Richie had been _ afflicted _with something, something he couldn’t get rid of or control. Richie was terrified, sitting on Eddie’s bed and clutching the sheets in his fingers like he was desperate to anchor himself to something before he got dragged away by the rapid current to the sharp rocks they were both sure lay below. Eddie was blinded by the need to protect Richie; all he wanted was to rip him out of danger, to take him somewhere they would both be safe. He was almost frantic with the need to protect him. Eddie saw danger everywhere in Derry and while he was skilled at avoiding it, he knew the burden of doing so was killing Richie. 

If he had a hope in hell of protecting Richie, he was going to have to put himself in danger. It scared him, but he had no choice. He could not keep living with the weight of wanting to keep Richie safe and not being able to, of failing him every day.

He said they should go on vacation. It was all he had to offer; if there was a place Richie could feel safe, he wanted it to be him. 

### 1994 - March

Eddie slammed his foot on the brake and both he and Bill jerked against the seatbelts so hard he was concerned he’d get whiplash. He looked apologetically at Bill, who shook his head to clear it. Bill just laughed, rolling his head in circles to mime the effect of tumbling over and over.

“Sorry,” Eddie said. 

“No, you’re d-d-doing much be-better than I did,” Bill said, smoothly. 

Eddie was not allowed to learn to drive. He had a provisional license, but his mother acted like the idea of him being behind the wheel was enough to make her pass out from stress, so he’d given up trying to fight her on it. His friends were teaching him to drive for the time being; it obviously couldn’t be counted as official hours, but it would hopefully make things easier when he went behind his mom’s back to get his license. He’d have to pay for fewer lessons, at least.

Bill was a pretty good teacher, as long as Eddie shut up and listened to him. He was fairly patient, and stayed calm when Eddie was panicking, which counted for a lot. 

“I like driving,” Eddie said. “I like cars. I just don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“You’ll learn. You b-b-be able to dr-dri-drive Richie around when you g-go on vacation,” Bill said.

“I doubt it. Richie never lets anyone touch the Dickmobile anyway.”

“He’d d-d-definitely let you. Your Mom know you’re g-g-going yet?”

“She thinks it’s a school thing.” Eddie winced. “I don’t think she believes me.”

“Probably not.”

Eddie eased the car around, slowly turning so they could do another loop of the quiet dirt roads around Mike’s property where they went to practice. Mike joined them a lot of the time, though Eddie’s driving made him a little more nervous than it did Bill. It was a good place to practice, in the quiet, away from the parts of Derry where nosy neighbours or cops were likely to get in their business. 

“She’s g-g-gonna flip when y-you go to California.”

“Yeah.” 

“Wh-wh-what are you gonna tell her? Are you j-just gonna leave? R-Richie is just gonna s-sp-split I think.”

He’d been thinking a lot about what he’d tell his mother, but none of it felt adequate and every time he even considered opening his mouth, the chance that he’d get overruled and trapped felt so overwhelming it was pointless to talk at all. In his mind sometimes he thought about what it would be like to run out in the middle of the night, throw his things into Richie’s car and never look back, but that fantasy never felt satisfying to him. Even in his imagination, he couldn’t let himself escape the grasping tentacles of his mother’s fear and guilt; those fantasies of running all ended up with him just going back. 

“I’ll think of something,” Eddie said.

### 1994 - April

Provincetown was beautiful and friendly, and Richie was happy there, and the whole week Eddie thought _ I don’t belong here _ . Richie, slowly starting to figure out the shape and edges of his sexuality, maybe he had a right to be there. But Eddie, who only knew himself as he had been dictated and rejected all other ideas, didn’t feel like he had a place in this world. He was not proud, flamboyant, or confident. Richie could be -- was -- all of those things. In an odd way, sometimes Eddie wished he _ was _ him. In the few times where he tried to analyse the things that drove him to do what he did, Eddie wondered if the reason he followed Richie around like a lovesick puppy wasn’t any kind of genuine love but was, in fact, just jealousy. Not that he thought it was love anyway. It couldn’t be. That wasn’t how it worked.

He was scared of leaving. They only had a few hundred dollars between them, no plans, no jobs, nowhere to go. They would be turning up in an entirely unfamiliar city with no one to turn to. If it all fell through -- which it _ would _ , it was an _ insane _ plan -- they’d end up having to come back. Driving out of Provincetown, Eddie tried to imagine returning home to his mother, having fled in the middle of the night to run to California. The idea of that failure gripped him in a terror so intense that he wanted to scream, wanted to freak out that Richie was apparently incapable of seeing that they were about to run into a brick wall. How Richie wasn’t scared of what would happen when they were plummeting off a cliff with nothing there to catch them Eddie would not, could not understand. He didn’t know if Richie knew he had no safety net, that having to crawl back home would be a humiliation he didn’t think anyone could live through. He was split between wanting to protect Richie from Derry and wanting to protect Richie from the inevitable failure that was rising up to meet them rapidly like the rocks at the bottom of a waterfall. 

Then again, he hadn’t realised that Richie was dying. Maybe he’d been in denial, hoping that Richie’s anger and sadness were a passing phase. Teenagers had teen angst, everyone knew that, and Richie had a lot to angst about. But standing on the side of the road, nearly all of the way back to Derry, and hearing Richie say that he would leave whether Eddie came with him or not, that he knew Eddie would leave him one day… 

Eddie clutched the mixtape Richie had made him close when he walked back into the house. He had known, on some level, their relationship would not stay the same forever. He would grow up and get married, and Richie would find someone who could love him the right way. That was just the way things had to be. Fuck if it didn’t make him miserable though. 

Inside the house his mother cried when he walked inside. 

“I called the police, but they said you had the right to do whatever you want,” she said, huge tears rolling down her cheeks in a way that made him feel like dirt for the crime of being alive.

“I do, Mama. I’m eighteen. I’m sorry, though. I shouldn’t have made you worry like that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” she said. “All I ever do is try to keep you safe. Anything could have happened to you, and I wouldn’t have known.”

He thought about how she hadn’t answered when he called, but didn’t say anything about it. He didn’t have to wonder about what she would say if she knew where he’d been; he _ knew _ what she’d do. She was so scared, even more scared than he was. Eddie didn’t have to be scared because, well, he knew wasn’t gay. Richie was gay, and that was fine, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t be, because he still wanted all that other crap, like a wife and kids and a picket fence. The normal stuff. The stuff you were expected to want. When he had all that, he was sure his mother would stop being so worried all the time, and then things would be easier. They’d both be happier.

He’d asked Richie how he’d known he was gay, but Richie hadn’t really been able to explain it that well and Eddie figured you just had to _ know _. Like, if you were gay, there was just something in your brain that told you that was how it was. And Eddie didn’t have that; he had a little calming voice that said he was straight and that everything was going to work out okay if he just followed the plan. 

Richie’s plan was something he thought about a lot. It was a constant low-level background noise to daily life, chiding him as he did his homework and studied for his exams, mocking him as he fought with his mother to make sure he didn’t miss too much school. Why was he bothering, if he was never going to go to college? Why work so hard if he was going to throw it all away for a road trip cross-country with a boy who had no plans and didn’t love him?

Same reason he always had the inhaler in his bag when he didn’t think he had asthma anymore, and kept taking the pills his mother forced into his hands every morning. He was scared of what would happen if he didn’t. 

### 1994 - May

“Where in the world would you go right now, if you could?” Richie said.

“Nowhere,” Eddie said. 

Richie was curled up against him. Sometimes Richie liked to curl up as small as he could, as if he was a tiny little thing, something delicate that needed protection. Eddie liked to hold him in those times, pretend that Richie wasn’t bigger or stronger than him, pretend that he really could ever have a chance of keeping Richie safe from anything. Eddie didn’t entertain a lot of fantasies of standing up to bullies and chasing them away, not anymore. Too many times he’d seen that he was a coward when put on the spot, too weak-willed and afraid to put himself at risk even when Richie was in danger. Fantasising about standing up for his friends made him feel worse, not better, humiliating reminders that he was too weak to help anyone, even himself. Having Richie in his arms, holding him tight, this was the most he ever got to feeling like he could protect his friend. He’d never want to be anywhere if he had the chance to be right there, holding Richie close.

### 1994 - May

The line went dead and they all stood staring at the phone lying on Ben’s kitchen table as it made a hollow ringing sound. Eddie couldn’t quite believe that Richie had really hung up, kept waiting, expecting to hear his voice come through the line and tell him that it was all a joke, really, he would never leave Eds behind. In fact, he was at the payphone at the end of Ben’s street, there was gas in the car, let’s go, Eduardo, vamanos. 

The phone just kept making that sound until Ben picked it up and placed it back on the cradle. Mike was the first one to move and hug Eddie, pulling him into a warm embrace that Eddie couldn’t react to. His entire body was stiff and cold, a corpse standing in the middle of the kitchen. Everything in front of his eyes was swimming oddly, the world teetering around him like he was viewing it through a lens of dirty water.

“He’s just angry because of his parents,” Ben said. “He’ll… He’ll come back.”

“I’m sure he’ll come back,” Stan said. He was not a good liar. 

“I c-c-can’t be-be-believe he’d d-d-d-do this to us,” Bill said.

Eddie’s breathing was a thin whistle and he pulled out of Mike’s hug to stumble away and sit down in one of the chairs around the table to try to breathe. 

“That’s it?” Eddie said, his voice wandering and lost. “He’s just gone?”

“No… No, Eddie, he’ll come back,” Mike said. “He’s just scared.”

Eddie knew he was wrong. Richie would not come back. Eddie had been afraid of what failure would do to them both, but saw then for the first time, that failure was _ not an option _. If Richie didn’t make out there, there was no coming back, and then there would be no Richie. 

Eddie had secured his place in a town where he would likely be safe forever, able to dodge around the old, familiar dangers and remain just fine in his bubble. Maybe he should have been angry with Richie for leaving him, but he felt more disappointed in himself, as if he had been caught out in a lie. There was really no way he was going to leave with Richie, not ever. He knew that. He had been consumed by potential failure and that had driven Richie away; Richie had seen how weak he was, how afraid. How he could not ever protect anyone but himself. Now, without the awful burden of taking a risk in his life, Eddie could be sure he was going to be ok. He was going to be just fine, forever. 

### 1994 - July

The phone rang for a long time before Richie answered it. His voice came through as a crackle over the speakerphone, maybe because of a bad connection or maybe because of the distance, Eddie didn’t know. It had been a long time since Eddie had heard Richie’s voice and he found himself holding his breath at the simple _ hey _ that came over the line, said so lightly it was like he’d just run into Richie in class one morning.

A few of them -- Eddie, Bev, Bill and Ben -- were crammed around the Denbrough’s phone. Mike and Stan didn’t come. Stan made up some transparently fake excuse and Mike sided with him, even when Eddie got prickly about the idea of not taking up the one opportunity they’d had to talk to Richie properly in weeks. Stan had been snappy and rude when Eddie got mean, their tempers crashing into each other before Mike gently steered Stan out of the conversation. Eddie did regret it, but he didn’t understand why Stan had been so unwilling to talk to Richie. Obviously he was angry with Richie, but Eddie couldn’t really process why. If anyone had a right to be angry, it was Eddie.

Maybe he was angry. A little bit. He hadn’t been anything at first, but it had shifted into being a lot of things, a lot of confused and conflicting things that rattled around inside his small body like an empty canister rattled inside his inhaler. 

“Richie!” Bev said, her excitement overflowing and making her jump straight up in her chair when she heard Richie’s voice. “It’s been way too long.”

“Sorry, know it must be fuckin’ lame as shit over there,” Richie said. “Especially now I’m not there.”

“Why haven’t you called before?” Eddie said. “It’s been weeks. I thought you were dead.”

They had been trying to get in touch with Richie for a while; he’d had the courtesy to call Stan when he’d gotten to LA, just to make sure no one thought he was dead, but he hadn’t spoken much and didn’t call again for days. Calling him back was a bust because he never seemed to be there and the guy who owned the place where Richie was crashing got tetchy about ‘not being the kid’s answering machine’. Eventually Richie had just told Beverly he would call _ them _ on a specific day, then hadn’t. It wasn’t until the second time he had arranged to call that he’d actually followed through and now all Eddie could think about how how disappointed he was.

The others were staring at him, Bill tensing his jaw and Beverly looking put-off by how much he bit into Richie, the obvious anger in his words that wasn’t the usual bickering, somehow. It was more genuine than that; this wasn’t squabbling about a hammock, it was _ hurt _. 

“I told you I was gonna be free today. I’m a busy man, Eds, I just moved out of Caleb’s place and now I have an actual apartment so…”

“Don’t call me Eds.”

He didn’t have the right anymore. Eddie didn’t like how angry he was, but he also didn’t like how coolly disaffected Richie sounded, the eyeroll almost audible no matter how bad the connection was. The idea of Richie sitting in a new apartment with new friends, all of them laughing at Eddie and how much he cared made Eddie’s entire body thrum with upset. He felt like an engine with a broken part, the gears not connecting properly, making the whole machine steadily shake itself apart. The whole thing coming to bits because one tiny piece was missing. It was a little pathetic, how easily you could destroy it, if you just took away a single vital part.

“Okay…” Richie said, like he didn’t get what the big deal was. 

“How’s it g-g-going, Richie?” Bill said. 

“Yeah, cool. Hey, guess who I saw? Fucking Wesley Snipes. Just like at a coffee shop. LA is crazy.”

The others made sounds of appreciation but Eddie didn’t fucking care. His arms were crossed tight and jaw clenched so hard he was hurting his teeth, but he held back on saying anything so Beverly could recount a story about Greta that she was sure Richie would find funny. Richie just made a small laugh without really giving much indication he’d been listening, and an awkward silence hung over the room.

“Bev’s moving to New York in a few weeks,” Ben said.

“Good. Get out of there Bev, get going,” Richie said.

Eddie wanted to curl up in on himself until he was nothing, shrink down until he was something small and hard, something you couldn’t crush or break no matter how much you tried. He wanted to be a bullet, dangerous and solid, small but capable of destroying everything in his path. He wanted to not exist. 

“It’s scary, but I’m excited,” Beverly said. 

“D-do you h-h-have any new friends?” Bill said. “Wh-who are the people yo-you’re living with?”

“Yeah, I’m out partying every night. It’s basically a non-stop fuckfest over here. It’s crazy. I have girls practically hanging off my-”

“Can you not just give us a real answer?” Eddie interrupted. “Or are you afraid that we’re going to figure out you’re still a loser?”

It was the kind of snide bickering they’d been doing for their entire lives, but it felt all wrong. Eddie’s words were too charged and an implicit meaning hung over everything. He didn’t know why he couldn’t hold back on himself, but it was all too much. His throat was closing up and his chest was heaving; thinking about girls wrapping themselves around Richie made him want to barf, the idea of Richie out every night drinking and partying filled him with sharp anxiety, memories of sitting in his kitchen and watching everything unravel in front of him while tears rolled down Richie’s bruised face choking up his mind.

“Someone’s jealous,” Richie said. It didn’t sound like a joke. “I have to go.”

“We only just started talking,” Ben said.

“Sorry. I forgot I have to go pick up my girlfriend from work. Bye.”

Richie hung up before any of them could say anything. In Eddie’s mind he picked up the phone and threw it against the wall so hard it exploded into a million little pieces. In reality he just stood up very quickly and stormed out of the living room, towards where he’d left his shoes by the porch. Bill rushed after him.

“Ed-Eddie,” Bill said. “Don’t go.”

“I gotta do something,” Eddie said. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine,” Beverly said, emerging from the living room after Bill.

“Obviously this is just the way things are now. So it must be fine,” Eddie said, knowing he was incoherent but not caring at all. He didn’t even say bye when he ran out the door to grab his bike, but clearly that was the way things worked these days. The others didn’t chase after him; whatever the reason was, Eddie took it as an implicit agreement.

He considered going home, but seeing his mother was the last thing he needed so he sped off towards Stan’s house instead, mind so blank that by the time he reached Stan’s house he had no real clue of how much time had lapsed at all, the moments between leaving Bill’s house and reaching Stan’s an odd blur. He just walked up the steps to Stan’s front door and hammered on it, before Stan’s father appeared a second later.

“Ed,” he said, with a wry smile. “I assumed it was an earthquake.”

“Sorry, Mr Uris,” Eddie said. “Is Stan here?”

“Yes, he’s up in his room with Mikey. You’re welcome to go up there, but try not to shake the house down.”

Eddie was not sure if Stan’s dad’s insistence on getting all of their nicknames slightly wrong was some kind of recurring bit, but he never had it in him to ask. He had an innate desire to respect authority, and on top of that Stan’s dad always seemed like he had another ironic comment he was waiting to whip out, which was far too stressful for Eddie to want to have to deal with. 

He made his way up to Stan’s room, a familiar route up the stairs and around a little corner on the second floor, a quirk of the house’s architecture that was imprinted into Eddie’s memory from years of walking it. He slunk into Stan’s room without knocking, found Mike lying on the bed reading an old comic and Stan sitting at his desk complaining about the agonising heartache of knowing that Marina Croft was still dating that moron Hunter, separating them forever. Stan stopped mid-flow when Eddie entered, watching him sit down on the edge of the bed next to Mike. 

“I thought you were talking to Richie,” Mike said, voice soft with the sadness he knew was already present in the air, even before Eddie had opened his mouth.

“It was all wrong,” Eddie said. He didn’t know how, or why, only that the statement was true.

“I knew he’d do that,” Stan said. “Make it wrong.”

“Why?” Eddie said, finding his eyes were blurry with tears in a way he hated.

Stan looked at Mike, and Eddie was filled with suspicion that the two of them were filled in on more than you would get from casual outside observation. He was struck with sudden intense embarrassment that his friends had been watching the two of them for _ years _, dancing around each other in their stupid teenage anguish. Shame settled on him like a cloud covering the sun.

“He’s scared of letting it be right,” Stan said eventually.

### 1995 - August

_ Richie, _

_ Writing this is really hard and not just because I’m not good at using at Bill’s stupid computer yet. It’s been over a year since you left and I’ve finished my first year of college. I thought by now I’d stop missing you, but I never did. You were right about Derry being boring, and you were right about me being fine. _

_ The longer I stay here the more okay with it being boring I get. I can’t explain it, it’s like I’m being brainwashed or something. I wish you were here to fight off the brainwashers. Maybe you can break into the studio of whoever made Star Wars and steal a bunch of blasters or something. _

_ I know you’re not coming back. You said you wouldn’t and I believe you. Instead of coming home I was thinking we could go to Provincetown like we did last spring. They have a pride parade every August so I thought we could see that. That spring break was the happiest I’ve been in my entire life. _

_ Nothing is the same without you. You were my best friend and I think you’ll always be my best friend. You don’t make friends as a grown up the way you do as a kid. I’m never going to meet anyone new who was there for me my whole life like you were, and being here without you feels like not having a part of my life. I miss you. _

_ Losers forever, _

_ Eddie. _

_ Hi Eds. I don’t really check email often. Been busy. Yeah that vacay was cool but I’m broke this year. Maybe some other time. Hope college is cool. _

_ Richie _

“Th-that’s all he wr-r-r-rote?” Bill said, staring at the screen over Eddie’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, deleting the message. He didn’t bother to reply.

### 1998 - February 

Eddie jolted awake to see his Mom standing over him, her face peaked with worry. He blinked and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, heart thumping in his chest as if he'd woken up to find out his nightmare was real along. 

"You scared me," he said.

"Do you have to go to school today?" She said.

"I have to go to school _ every _day, Mom, I've been over this. If I miss classes they'll fail me." 

He got out of bed, his mother standing and watching him with mournful eyes that made him feel like he was six again and begging to be allowed to go play with the other kids. She always made him feel so small; at twenty-two he'd gotten as tall as he would ever be, standing at a perfectly average 5'9", though his scrawny frame and tendency to slouch made him look smaller still. Sonia was around the same height, but that wasn't really important. It wasn't about actual, physical size at all, just about presence; when Sonia Kaspbrak was in a room, everything revolved around her. She was the centre of the universe.

"I can get you a doctor's note," she said, confidently, her answer to everything. She almost definitely could, whether the doctor had seen Eddie or not. 

"I don't_ need _ one, Mom, I'm not sick. And a doctor's note won't stop me from failing exams because I have to keep playing catch-up. I'm going to class."

Sonia made that _ face _ and Eddie gritted his teeth in his skull. 

“I need your help today. You can’t take time to come and help your own mother? I’m not well. You never think to ask about me, do you Eddie? You’re fine, so you’re happy to go running off with your little friends. What about me? When do you ever think about how I am?”

“You’re not sick, Mama.” 

This was her new favourite tactic. She wasn’t very successful at convincing Eddie he was sick, not anymore, and it often wasn’t worth it anyway. Eddie was willing to risk going to work or school with a cold or fever, found that a lot of the time the classes distracted him from feeling unwell. A lot of the time after an hour or so in class he'd forget he was ever feeling ill at all.

“How would you know? You’re never here. Anything could happen to me, and you’d never know.”

He could see the tantrum growing but he told himself he wasn’t going to give in this time, not again, not when it was going to start having real repercussions on his degree. He wasn’t going to flunk his final year because his mom wanted to pretend she was sick. He dodged around her and locked himself in the bathroom, running the shower and pretending he couldn’t hear her over the sound of the water.

Unfortunately, by the time he got out, she’d lapsed into the silent treatment, had retreated to her room. He knew from experience when he got back from class she wouldn’t talk to him for probably the rest of the day, would act out that she was deeply unwell and completely unable to do anything for him or herself. This would go on for however long it would take her to feel like he had been sufficiently shamed for the cruel, negligent abandonment of his poor, ailing mother. 

His callousness about it made him feel guilty as he climbed into his car -- a second-hand dented sedan he’d bought off his cousin and had managed to tune himself into something that ran pretty well -- even if his mother was deeply predictable in her punishments and her emotional manipulation, she was still _ his mother _, he still lived with her, ate her food, wore clothes she bought him. He ought to be grateful. Some people kicked their kids to the curb.

Driving past the Tozier house was something he did routinely on his way to college, but it had taken some getting used to. That first summer without Richie it had been oddly haunting, like seeing someone in a crowd that you had thought long dead. It shouldn’t, by rights, still have been a living place with people moving in and out of it. It should have collapsed into the ground once Richie was gone, snapped out of existence like its reason for being had left and it no longer served any purpose. Eddie would have preferred that.

Now, though, it was four years on and Eddie didn’t really notice it anymore. Derry had become increasingly filled with old ghosts. Ben, Stan, and Beverly’s houses were all abandoned now, gravestones marking pieces of Eddie’s childhood that he could never return to. The town had fenced off the quarry, so there was no more swimming there, not that Eddie would now that he really understood how dirty it was. The hardware store where Richie used to work was still open, not that Eddie ever had reason to go there. The high school too, on a street he rarely ever had reason to drive down, stood a constant sentinel in the distance, like a testament to his mistakes.

Today there was a moving truck outside the Tozier’s house. This alarmed Eddie enough that he actually slowed to a crawl on the road outside, watching as two removal men carried a sofa out of the front door and to the truck. Eddie hadn’t spoken to Richie’s parents in years -- why would he? -- but the sight of them leaving alarmed him. He had no time to hang around, though, and drove away, trying to put it out of his mind.

At lunch he met up with Bill, who had a break at the same time as him. They met in the cafeteria on campus, where Bill was sitting with his face flat on the table. Eddie sat down opposite him and gently slid a can of soda into his head to try and get his attention. Bill jerked upright, looking miserable. He flicked his bangs out of his eyes. The grunge movement had only really just reached Maine and he’d gone all in on it. Eddie hadn’t seen him in something other than a flannel shirt in years. 

“You ok?” Eddie said. 

“I hate this fucking place,” Bill said.

“We have like two semesters left. If you drop out now I’m going to take it personally.”

“I’m so sick of it, Eddie. I hate my professors. They all hate me. I’m never gonna make it as a writer.”

“Don’t be a dumbass. You’re the best writer we know.”

“Do you know any other writers?”

“That’s not the point.” Bill lolled back in his seat. “It’s fine for you. You’re going to get a job. The apocalypse could come, but they’re still going to need guys to do math. No one needs anyone to be a bad writer.”

“Are we still at the Bill Denbrough pity party? Do I at least get some cake for coming?”

“Ugh. You’re the worst, Eddie.” Bill sighed but then his face took on a more concerned look. “I do actually have to tell you something.”

“Oh, God. What. Don’t tell me Mike kicked you out, because you can’t stay with me and Mommy Dearest, for your own sake.”

“No, no, the Hanbrough household is still united.”

“_ Hanbrough? _”

“Yes. Hanlon-Denbrough. We are a team, we have a team name. Anyway, no, it’s not that.” Bill cracked open the soda Eddie had slid him. “The Toziers are moving out.”

“Yeah, I saw. They live like two blocks away, I could basically see the truck from my house.”

“Yeah but I… My mom talked to Mrs Tozier yesterday. She said Richie was coming by today to pick up his stuff.”

“Oh,” Eddie said.

“You should go see him,” Bill said. “I don’t know what… You just should.”

“Maybe.”

“Eddie. Don’t pretend you don’t miss him. I know I do, and what happened with the two of you was crazy.”

He stared pointedly at his sandwich and didn’t answer Bill, changing the subject. He had another class after lunch but struggled to pay attention to the professor, his mind wandering constantly, always drifting back to the thought of Richie back in his childhood home. Eddie didn’t even know what Richie looked like now; he only had the outdated memory of his friend, a snapshot of a teenage boy who no longer existed except in Eddie’s memories and in Stan’s old photographs. There was a man out there, somewhere on the west coast, a man with a new life, new friends, and dramatic, exciting jobs. A man that Eddie didn’t know. 

But maybe one that he _ could _know.

He had another class that afternoon, but he skipped. All that fucking fuss and anger about how he wouldn’t skip, and there he was, driving off campus at barely two in the afternoon. He didn’t care, though. He wasn’t going to be able to pull his mind out of the spiral of obsessing and planning what he would say anyway, and all it was going to do was turn his entire afternoon into a loop of internal arguments. The only answer was to confront the problem directly, even if the idea of doing so was making Eddie’s arms shake.

Arriving back at the Tozier’s house, the moving truck was still parked outside. Eddie pulled up on the street opposite and slunk across the road, feeling a little like he was entering enemy lines. He didn’t really know what to make of Richie’s parents now. They’d talked to him one time since Richie had left, to ask if he knew Richie went (he had no answers other than ‘LA’) and he found that he was intensely distrustful of them now. As a kid he had found them pleasant but boring in the way most kids found their friends’ parents, but the sea of uncertainty around what they had actually said or done and his deep instinct to side with Richie meant that Eddie always felt like he was analysing them now for some kind of predator intent. As if they were going to unmask and reveal they were secretly serial killers the entire time. 

Mrs Tozier was outside the house when Eddie approached, watching a removal man carry a table with a look of deep concern on her face. She looked surprised when she saw Eddie walking towards her with his hands deep in his pockets, shoulders hunched defensively.

“Oh… Eddie,” she said, as if she had somehow forgotten the name of her son’s best friend. “How can I help you?”

Her tone was polite but there was an underlying bead of concern that Eddie didn’t like.

“Hi, Mrs Tozier,” Eddie said. “I, uh… You’re moving, huh?”

“Yes,” Mrs Tozier said. “We’re moving closer to my family, in Bangor.”

“Oh. Ok. I, uh…” Eddie shuffled his feet. “I heard that Richie was coming back for his things, and I wanted to know if he…”

The look on Mrs Tozier’s face was pitying in a way that made Eddie’s stomach churn. He wasn’t sure how she was about to let him down, but he knew she was even before she opened her mouth.

“I’m sorry, Eddie, we thought Richie was going to come see us, but he changed his mind. He’s not coming.”

“Oh.”

He should have known. Eddie felt a hot flush of embarrassment crossing his face, caught out being the stupid, sick little puppy trailing after the big kids who didnt want or need him once again. Richie had said he wasn’t going to come back, and he had meant it.

“You know we… We have his things packed up, if you want them,” Mrs Tozier offered. 

She indicated a couple of sad cardboard boxes sitting on the ground by the front door. Eddie hesitated, wondering what the fuck he was going to do with a shrine to Richie Tozier in his house. It was already pathetic how _ lonely _ he was. He still had friends; he had Bill and Mike, Stan and Ben visited in summer and winter breaks, and Beverly called all the time, plus he had other friends at college, new ones, ones who didn’t know about any of his past and made innocent assumptions that his life was safe and normal. None of them were ever like Richie, but no one was _ like Richie _. Even if he met someone else with a loud mouth and a shitty sense of humour, none of them were ever going to have his past. You could make new memories, but you couldn’t make the old ones lose their meaning. 

“Ok,” Eddie said. He picked up the biggest box, two smaller ones teetering unsteadily on the top. As sad and pathetic as it might be, he was stung with a need to save these things, to protect them in the absence of their owner. “I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around I guess, Mrs Tozier.”

Eddie was leaving when she called after him.

“You shouldn’t take it personally, Eddie. He was hiding a lot of things.”

“Not from me,” Eddie said, turning back to glance at her. She looked at him with a calculating stare, like she was trying to add up what exactly he knew, but Eddie didn’t stay to carry on the conversation.

He stacked the boxes in the back of his car and went home, back to his mother, because he didn’t know what else he could do. She was happy he came home early, so there would be someone to help her after all.

“My good little boy,” she said, pinching his cheek. “You’re always here when Mommy needs you.”

That was one way of putting it, Eddie figured. At least he made someone happy. 

He left the boxes in his car at first, not going out to check on them until the next day before he had to leave for class, sitting on the backseat of his car and awkwardly maneuvering the large box around so he could get into it, splitting open the packing tape with his keys. He didn’t want to take them into his house, not yet. If his mother saw, he risked having her go through them and throw out everything she didn’t like, and there would be no replacing any of it. A distant memory popped up of Richie, shellshocked and hollow, lying in Eddie’s arms in the hammock in the clubhouse, after his parents had thrown out just about everything he’d owned. He’d clung to Eddie then, and Eddie had believed what he was saying was _ you’re all I have left _ , but even if that _ had _been what he meant, Richie clearly hadn’t been too worried about letting go of the scant few things his parents hadn’t fed to the fire.

The biggest box was a disorganised jumble of clothes, books, tapes and movies. Richie’s old NES was there, clunky and cold at the bottom, wrapped up in layers of ugly Hawaiian shirts and semi-ironic band shirts. There was maybe three dozen cassettes, too many bands for Eddie to name, new wave and rock and rap and punk, the most sophisticated taste in music of anyone in New England. He let his fingers run over a faded white shirt patterned with blue palm trees and resisted the urge to hold it to his nose and see if it still smelled the way he remembered. 

One of the other boxes was old school books; the Tozier’s insistence on hanging onto them depressed Eddie, for some reason. He discarded that one and figured that Richie would appreciate it if he threw it onto a bonfire. He pried open the final box, which was just a shoe box with the lid taped shut, and looked inside.

On the top were some ancient gay porn magazines, which made him groan, even though Richie wasn’t there to hear his disapproval. Underneath was an unopened bottle of vodka and a bunch of pamphlets advertising Provincetown, which Eddie found he couldn’t look at without his eyes immediately welling up horribly with tears. There was also a switchblade, which he didn’t like to touch and then, at the bottom, a photograph. Two boys, only streaks of light and barely coalescing into human forms, tumbling to the water below against a backdrop of rock. He knew the partner to this picture was back in his room, safely hidden inside the VHS case for _ Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back _, where he’d moved it after his mother had gotten too nosy. He had a vague idea that one day, maybe he’d frame it. It was a nice picture.

He took a diversion when driving to school and went out to the barrens, tracking down the old clubhouse. No one had been in there for four years, and he found it cold and filthier than hell when he climbed down the old ladder, the shoebox safely tucked under his arm. There were spiderwebs -- Stanley’s old enemy -- hanging from the rafters, and the old stereo was rusted beyond repair. But there was a dry, safe corner underneath the table, and Eddie slid the shoebox there, knowing it was unlikely anyone would ever find it.

He stood in the clubhouse for a moment; the hammock had collapsed, the ropes eaten away by age, and the swing was on its last legs. There was so much detritus left around, in the careless way kids would discard things, assuming that it would still be there when they returned. And it was, of course. Everything stays, but it still changes. The clubhouse had been there before them all, and would be there after. Maybe one day another set of boys would climb down the old ladder and put up a hammock, and they would argue about space because they wanted to touch but didn’t know how to touch without being afraid. And maybe those boys would figure out how to hold each other before the fear ruined it all.

Eventually it was too cold and Eddie climbed back up out of the clubhouse, letting the door swing shut on his childhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is adult richie time... i wrote the chapter a long, long time ago so i'm really glad to finally get to that point. going to be weird! sad to leave the teenagers behind but happy to move on as well. got a lot planned!


	14. 2014: i wanna see it lay in your eyes when i'm leaving with your love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> general note; because things are different, some of the Losers aren't going to be married to the same people, have the same jobs, live in the same place, so on. just a heads up.

When Richie was thirty-eight he received an email from the boy he had loved. The email said “I miss you”, which was spelled out by sending him a link to the Derry High School 2014 reunion Facebook page, with a signature that just said  _ Eds _ . 

The email arrived at 8:30 AM. Richie didn’t notice it, because he didn’t wake up until 9:45 AM. He was hungover, and lay in bed for a good ten minutes longer, cradling his head in his hand and trying to motivate himself to crawl out from under the sheets, but the ability to force himself to get out of bed was out of his control. He didn’t get up until he knew he needed to piss too badly to keep putting it off, his head aching. The sudden movement made him feel nauseated so he stood leaning his head on the cool bathroom wall until he felt a little more grounded and could go back to lurching around his apartment.

He had three missed calls from people at work and that was when he realised he was horrifically late. He also had many missed calls from Anthony, which he was going to ignore just like he’d ignored the other two days’ worth of calls. It was going through the notification backlog that he first saw the email. He stood staring at the text on his screen like he might have misread it somehow, as if it was going to suddenly transform into something other than a hyperlink to Facebook and a single word. For a second he wanted to believe that maybe it was someone else, but the email edwardkaspbrak1976@gmail.com didn’t leave him much room for doubt.

He told himself he didn’t have time for this, making a strong cup of black coffee and forcing himself to take the world’s fastest shower when he knew he could really do with letting himself soak for an hour. Then he threw some clothes on and sprinted out of his apartment, hair still wet. It was going to take him forty-five minutes to get to the studio no matter what, so he told himself it wasn’t worth panicking about it even though the anxiety was making his stomach riot against him. He sat in the car and ran the exact words he was going to use when he walked into the office through his head over and over, as if he’d suddenly be able to fix everything he could just land on the right sentence.

He burst into the offices of  _ The Loudmouth Roadshow  _ over two hours late and was met by the distinctly unhappy faces of the showrunner Eliza and his co-host Kath. He tried to spin out the material he’d been working on in the car, but unsurprisingly, a good joke didn’t actually solve his problems. 

“You’ve missed half the read-through,” Eliza said. “You missed two of your own sketches. If you’re not happy with the material this week, it’s on you.”

“Oh, and I had so many notes,” Richie said, witheringly. “The writers know what they’re doing. Why else would we have them?” 

This got a stony response from Eliza and Kath, and Richie wondered how much closer he was to getting fired. He was glad he had a tour starting in a couple of months; he liked stand-up a lot more than he liked being on a weekly sketch show, and remained hopeful that one day he wouldn’t have to do one because he wasn’t doing well enough at the other. He felt a little more confident now that he wasn’t writing his own material. 

The transition into having it all workshopped for him had been extremely natural. Early in his career, critics who didn’t like his stand-up said he came across as shallow; a soulless veneer of frat boy sensibilities in a respectable blazer. ‘No better than the rich corporate daddy’s boys swarming around the office, telling jokes to make other rich, corporate daddy’s boys laugh, unaware of how little he has ever lived or felt because he lacks the capacity for self-awareness’ had been one piece of criticism he’d gotten, when he was recycling bit after bit trying not to let anyone see past the shield and notice there was a man who rarely smiled under all that gross humour. Being able to crowdsource the Richie Tozier brand helped make it seem a little more fleshed out and real; he did a more passable impression of a human being now.

He jumped into the next part of the table-read, sitting around the giant ring of tables they used every week, the other actors and the writers looking either relieved he’d finally arrived or annoyed he was so late. There was a brief moment of bickering while one of the writers tried to persuade Eliza that they should go through the sketches featuring Richie that he’d missed, but she dismissed their concerns and Richie didn’t argue. His head, which was throbbing nicely under the staticky artificial lighting, was somewhere else entirely. 

_ Eds _ .

He had hated being called Eds, had told Richie so many times. But he had said he wasn’t Richie’s boyfriend either, and that was a fucking lie. Or maybe not. Maybe there just wasn’t a good word for what they had been. ‘Boyfriend’ almost didn’t sound strong enough… But that was just what it was like, being a teenager. It was stupid to get caught up in the emotional turmoil of those years, like a sad fifty year old dad recounting his high school football career over and over to his son. Richie had clear memories of how it had felt to love Eddie, how he had thought that the pain of being unloved was so intense that it would destroy him. Standing in the fields by Mike’s house and looking up at the stars and thinking of himself as a black hole, as a thing where all light and hope went to die. That shit was stupid. Everyone spent their teenage years wandering around thinking they were crazy or evil and that everything that ever happened in their lives was the single most important thing that had ever happened to anyone,  _ ever _ . Richie’s teen angst and silly crush were no different.

He'd thought about Eddie many times over the years, of course. Of the few friends Richie had in LA that he actually talked to, most of them were vaguely aware of the traumatic circumstances in which he’d left home, but none of them had the full picture. Sharing it always carried with it the sick sting of guilt, and he only ever gave suggestions, an impression of what had happened, a blur of light falling too fast for their eyes to see…

“Rich,” Kath’s voice pierced through the fog. “It’s your line.”

He stared at her, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room on him, and then tried to find his place on the script. His head was still pounding and he found it was hard to focus his eyes on the words right away. That email was really fucking up his day, though the hangover wasn’t helping. He read his lines like a man falling back down a flight of stairs and ignored the sighs around him.

When they broke for lunch Richie bolted for the burrito place around the corner. He was starving and convinced that the food would help cure his ailments. He sat in the parking lot behind the studio and ate like a ravening animal, but all that did was make him feel more queasy than he had before and he sat for a little while with his head pressed against the cool window of the car. He was very intentionally trying not to think about the email, but the more he tried not to think about it, the more childhood memories kept springing back… 

Man, they’d gone on vacation together once, hadn’t they? All of eighteen years old, puffed up with adrenaline from how exciting it was to leave the small confines of their town. It had felt so vitally important at the time, the chance to exist anywhere that wasn’t Derry. As if going somewhere else would save them. He didn’t know why he’d thought a change of place would fix what was wrong with them. Stupid, childish logic… 

He’d be lying if he said the ideas of  _ what if we had left together _ or  _ what if I’d gone back to see Eddie _ had never occurred to him. Of course they had. He’d spent years grieving Eddie, grieving all of the Losers, grieving the life he thought that he’d deserved. His first few years in LA, alone in a city where no one knew him and no one gave a shit, he had been horrified by getting precisely what he wanted; total anonymity. Not a soul noticed him or cared, the exact opposite of Derry where even total strangers had opinions on him, where his legend preceded him like a toxic cloud. No one in LA gave a  _ fuck _ about Richie Tozier -- until suddenly they did. 

But all that had been decades ago. For a long time now it hadn’t mattered if he had friends or not, because he had steady work acting or doing gigs, he paid his rent on time, and he drove a nice car. He had people he went to parties for. He slept around. Richie Tozier had it made; Richie Tozier didn’t need to think about what would have happened if Eddie had gotten in the car, because he was living the life everyone wanted. How many thousands of no-name kids washed up in LA looking to make it big and how many actually succeeded? He was  _ lucky _ . 

Someone knocked on the window of his car and he jerked back, opening his eyes to see Kath standing there, the sun high behind her. He opened the door and climbed out, stretching his legs. His hair, already naturally pretty curly and at this point about collar length, had dried from the morning into something resembling an explosion. He had forgotten to bring his usual hair tie and had no way of constraining the mess, which didn’t help him look any better.

“Are you high?” She said.

“What?” He said. “No, I just, I have a lot on my mind.”

“When don’t you?” She said, tired more than spiteful.

“What does  _ that _ mean?” 

“Forget it. Are you coming back inside? We need to get back to work.”

They had rehearsals. He pinched the bridge of his nose and wished to God he wasn’t needed here, so he could just run away. Technically, there wasn’t anything stopping him from just… Up and running, other than the fact he’d be letting a lot of people down, but he was good at letting people down. Still, it would be a stupid thing to do. He went with Kath back into the studio, the email burning away on his phone like a self-destructing note, giving him moments to make up his mind before it exploded and took him out with it.

A school reunion. It had been exactly twenty years since they had graduated; a nice round number. A good time to regroup and say wow, look at how far we’ve come. He hadn’t been back home in twenty years, hadn’t seen any of his old friends in over ten. Hadn’t seen Eddie in twenty. He’d let all of that slide away from him, water under the bridge. He didn’t think about any of them regularly anymore; he had a  _ life _ , and he did not spend that life mourning his childhood, not when he was a busy man with a demanding job and a just as demanding drinking habit.

It would be  _ incredibly  _ easy not to go back. Richie was extremely good at not going back to Derry, not even once had he relapsed and wandered back into his hometown since he’d skipped town decades ago. Over the years, all his friendships had gradually slipped away from him, fading out of his life as he withdrew from the burden of keeping in touch, escaping from the grasp of anyone who tried to know him. Very few people really knew Richie now and that was the way he liked it. A closed-off core surrounded by a distant but funny layer, affable enough that he could glide by without people getting to know him. 

The day crawled by at an interminable pace. He found he was angry with himself; every time a memory resurfaced it stang and he knew, as much as he argued with the voice in the back of his mind, he was not going to talk himself out of this one. He was scattershot in rehearsals, his timing off, his mind everywhere. He stared into the face of the director about a hundred times and knew he was blowing all of it, the urge to run so strong in him that he felt like he was being split in two, his mind racing out of the building while his body stayed put and hyperventilated without it. The actor he was working with in one scene noticed how sick he looked and asked if he was alright.

“I got invited to my high school reunion,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, going back home is always rough.”

Her nonchalance about it just made him feel more annoyed that he was so upset about this.  _ Everyone  _ had problems with their hometown, especially people who moved to LA. It was stupid of him to get so worked up and angry. He splashed his face with cold water and told himself to calm down. It wasn’t like anything really bad had ever happened to him, he just felt bad because he’d been mean to a kid years ago, and because he’d been bullied. What was he, a pussy? 

“Get over it,” he told himself, trying to throw himself back into his work.

When he got home, past seven PM, hungry and cranky and tired, he found that Anthony was sitting on the floor outside his apartment.

“You look  _ awful _ ,” Anthony said. It wasn’t clear if he was concerned or gloating, but maybe that was just Richie’s paranoia speaking. 

“Thanks,” Richie said. 

He left the door open so Anthony could follow him in as Richie shambled over to the kitchenette to pour himself a drink. Anthony watched him with visible resentment; he had been telling Richie to drink less for the entire time they’d known each other, and Richie going to get a drink now could almost look like a targeted statement. It wasn’t, though; for it to be that, it would require a lot more active intent. Richie’s drinking was more automatic. 

Anthony walked in but didn’t make himself comfortable, just quietly closed the door behind him. 

“I kept calling you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Richie said.

“Oh, so you saw, and you just like… Didn’t care?” Anthony said. 

“Of course I cared. I just… Didn’t think you’d want to talk to me.” Richie threw back the glass of whiskey he’d poured himself, but it didn’t really smooth over the pebble caught in his gears that was making his internal motors spit sparks. He’d need a lot more alcohol for that.

“You’re such a fucking liar. You’re not even a  _ good _ liar. You do it so much that you’d think you’d get better, but it’s like you don’t even think about the shit you say.”

“I don’t, really.” Richie leaned both his hands on the kitchen counter, staring down Anthony, who ran a frazzled hand through his neat black hair and let out a little laugh.

"God, you just don't give a  _ fuck _ , do you? When was the last time you stopped for a minute to think about how I feel?” 

Richie wasn’t thinking about him. Richie was thinking about the Skinner Box.

The Skinner Box was a piece of laboratory equipment used to study conditioning in rats. A rat could be trained to press a lever in order to receive a pellet, or taught that pressing the lever would administer an electric shock. When Richie had meant Anthony at a party, five months ago, he had known things would end badly. They always did with Richie. And yet he had gone through with it anyway, allowing himself to be subjected to the humiliation of once again driving the entire relationship off a cliff and into certain disaster. So in that moment Richie thought of a rat, a rat that was too stupid to understand the levers for the food and for the electric shock were different, that kept smashing the button over and over, hoping for a different outcome, inevitably ending up cringing in pain and yet going back again for more.

"Look, we both know you're going to leave, so why don't we just get this over with?" Richie said. 

Anthony stared at him, dark eyes narrow and hard. 

"You know, it's bad enough that you were a no-show at opening night when I  _ told _ you how much I needed the support…" Anthony began.

"I told you at the start that if you dated me, I wasn't going to be public about it," Richie interrupted. "You said you were fine with that."

"I didn't need you to come and fuck me on stage," Anthony said, voice a whipcrack that made Richie flinch. "I just needed a friend. You're not  _ private,  _ Richie, you just use that as a fucking excuse to stop anyone from caring about you, and the second someone does, you have to get them out.  _ That's _ why you ghosted me. Because you wanted to get this relationship over with as fast as possible. You think everyone is going to abandon you like your high school boyfriend so you do everything you can to make that happen.”

The words hit like a fist to the jaw making your teeth crack together and your head snap back. Richie slammed his glass down on the counter.

“That’s a fucked up thing to say, Anthony,” Richie said. “I told you that shit in confidence.”

“And you think I can’t see how fucked up you are about it? I know you think you’re the unreadable man, but you’re an open book.”

“If I’m so boring and predictable, why don’t you just fuck off?” Richie spat.

Rat hits button, gets electric shock. He winced, looking at the hurt expression on Anthony’s face, and felt revolted by himself. 

“I didn’t mean that, I… I’m sorry. Can we talk about this some other time? I’ve been sick all day--” Richie said, he finger-combed his bangs out of his eyes, as if that was what was stopping him from being able to see reason. 

“You’re not sick, you’re hungover. Again. Because you were drunk.  _ Again _ .”

“Ok, whatever, I’m hungover. But can we talk later? Today’s been fucking horrible, and I got this fucked up email from back home. I don’t know what…”

“ _ What _ ? Back home...?” Anthony shook his head, trying to focus. “No, Rich. I don’t want to talk about any of that. I don’t want to come back and talk to you about anything. I’m just giving you what you wanted, alright? You don’t ever have to worry about helping me out or calling me back again.”

Richie wished very badly then he could have someone to talk to. 

“I’m sorry,” he told Anthony, voice pitching into a whine. “You don’t have to go. Please.”

“It’s just… It’s not enough. I can’t keep playing the game of being here when you need me and then getting thrown away when you don’t want me around. It’s not fair on me.”

Rat pushes button. Eddie’s tear-streaked face. Rat pushes button. Driving out of Derry until his body was stiff and painful from sitting for so long. Rat pushes button. Getting a girlfriend the second he got to LA, cheating on her with her brother. Rat pushes button. Being broke, doing stand-up to audiences of no one, working as a PA, missing his friends so badly that he saw them everywhere. Calling them in the middle of the night, sobbing to Beverly and Stan and Mike and Ben and Bill that he’d fucked up worse than he’d ever fucked up, that he was going to die, he was sure of it. Never calling Eddie because the shame was so strong it couldn’t even be spoken. Feeling worse when he heard how badly everyone missed him. Deciding not to call anymore. Rat pushes button. Guys who treated him like shit, guys he treated like shit, girls he wore like a fancy accessory so his roommates he was terrified of wouldn’t suspect anything. Rat pushes button. 

Years and years and years of this, and standing now entirely alone, begging someone to be on his side. Anthony’s big brown eyes were so filled with pity that it made Richie want to tear his own eyes out. In lieu of that he just looked away, staring at the floor. 

“This is what’s best. I’m not going to say I’m sorry. You really hurt me, and I don’t know if… Maybe you’ll change, but I can’t force myself to stick around and wait to see if it’s worth it.”

“I’m not worth it,” Richie said.

“I guess not,” Anthony said. 

He let himself out of Richie’s apartment, the door swinging shut behind him without much of a sound, the room lapsing into anticlimactic silence. 

Richie sat down on the couch and thought about how now he didn’t have anyone to worry about, he could do anything he wanted, but realised immediately after that that there was nothing he wanted to do. What, was he going to go on Grindr? Find some other guy who would ask if he wanted to get breakfast the morning after? Rat presses the button, receives an electric shock. Stupid rat.

He turned on the TV to distract himself, but the email hung in his head more than any of the words being said by the actors on-screen did; Captain Kirk in a rerun of the newish  _ Star Trek _ movie kept talking, but all Richie was thinking about was a room full of his friends arguing about if  _ The X-files  _ or  _ Quantum Leap  _ was better while Mike’s plaintive voice talked about  _ Star Trek _ . With a jolt of recollection, Richie realised that had been after that whole fiasco with the girl… What was her name? He didn’t recall, but it had been a girl he had tried to date at the end of high school, his first real girlfriend. Not his last, stupidly; he kept trying to date women. Every now and again he would just get scared that maybe the reason he couldn’t stay in a relationship really was less to do with him as a person and more to do with loneliness being a chronic symptom of homosexuality, but he didn’t know why he thought that, because dating women worked out even more badly than dating men did. Richie had to admit that the evidence largely indicated he, as a person, was unloveable. 

But maybe it was also that he had run away from the only person he had ever loved as well. The problem might not just be that he was an unlovable person, it was that he was incapable of love. Something in him had just burned out, like a star collapsing in on itself and leaving a black hole. As horrifying as it was to consider, maybe teenage him had been right.

No, he couldn’t let that be true. He threw back the rest of his drink and grabbed his phone from his pocket. He was not going to let that little gangly asshole be right about anything. 

So when Richie tapped through to the Facebook page it wasn’t really love that made him hit  _ attending _ on the invite. It was spite. He was doing it to spite his teenage self, that dumb fuckin’ kid who had thought Eddie Kaspbrak hung the stars and that no one in the history of the world had ever had a friendship more important than the Losers Club. What a stupid name. Yeah, when he got there, and found that time and distance had corroded their ability to love each other beyond the state of any repair, then he’d see that all the shit he was hung up on was nonsense. Maybe then he’d be able to move on. He told himself that when he got back ‘home’ and saw that it didn’t make him any happier or fill up the empty cold space inside him, the one he kept pouring drink into, then he’d see… Then he’d see… 

He poured himself another drink and wrote his agent an email that he was going away in a month. 

* * *

Over the next month he came close to cancelling five or six times and actually did once, cancelled the plane tickets and everything, but bought them again when he was blackout drunk, and then he was running out of time to change his mind. The thing that really set in stone that he had to go was Bill sending him a message on Facebook. He hadn’t spoken to Bill since they were both twenty-three; one of those things that he had just allowed to fall by the wayside. Didn’t even have any of Bill’s contact info, had thrown it away after calling Bill in the middle of the night and Bill's girlfriend answering instead, horrified and confused by why a man she'd never met was drunk and asking her about Silver. It had been too embarrassing a fiasco for him to want to repeat.

A lot of public figures -- Richie didn’t really consider himself that famous, TV show or no -- kept private Facebooks for friends and family, but Richie wasn’t one of them. His Facebook was a public thing run by the PR people at his agency, so the message from Bill could have very well been lost in the shuffle, under a pile of random bullshit from fans. It was only really because his agent mentioned it to him three days after the message had been delivered --  _ it looks like someone from back home had messaged you ha-ha that’s funny _ , as if it was just an anecdote -- that he found out at all. 

_ Hi, Rich. Been a long time, huh? Really looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been way, way too long. I wasn’t sure if you’d want to come to the reunion, but Beverly still had an email address for you, and Eddie thought it was worth a shot. The rest of us Losers are having a meet-up before the reunion at a restaurant in Derry. Everyone’s going to be there, and it won’t be the same without you. We really want to see you. Been too quiet around here without the Trashmouth. Bill. _

No one had called Richie ‘Trashmouth’ in years. 

Richie looked at Bill’s Facebook page and saw that he taught high school English, was married, had two kids, and had just published a book of short stories. The revelation of this all within a couple of minutes took Richie’s breath away. He looked at the photo of Bill; he was obscenely handsome, with brown hair going early grey at the temples, those same bright blue eyes, and was married to a woman Richie didn’t recognise but that seemed to be called Sue. Richie had absolutely no way of guessing how old the kids were -- what the fuck did he know about kids -- but he would have placed both Bill’s daughters as being under ten. 

Fuck. In Richie’s most recent memory of him, Bill was a college-grad chirping away about writing and how glad he was to have graduated. How the fuck had he ended up  _ teaching _ ? And staying in  _ Derry _ ? With some guilt, Richie thought that if he’d really cared to know, he should have stayed in touch. He couldn’t bring himself to look up anyone else; he thought if he saw photos of the vacations and kids and careers he'd chosen to excuse himself from, he'd throw up. 

He did throw up the day he left, kneeling over the toilet and coughing up stringy bile, cursing himself for not having the common sense to not get drunk the day before he had a long flight. He’d never had any fucking sense, so this shouldn’t have been surprising. The only thing he was thankful for was that he managed to get to LAX with plenty of time left to catch his plane. He sat in the Dunkin’ at the airport and drank black coffee and told himself that the feeling of someone kicking the shit out of his heart was just anxiety, but it sure felt like his body was actively ripping itself apart to try and get away from him. 

The flight was fine. He slept through most of it and didn’t have any in-flight drinks, which was probably for the best. It was a seven hour flight to Maine, and he touched down in Bangor at 5 PM, the summer sun making the evening bright and warm. He picked up the rental car he’d booked so he could drive the rest of the way to Derry, moving on automatic functions, his brain floating some ten feet behind his body, screaming in horror at everything he was doing, the shock and fear hitting him too late to stop him in his tracks as he drove the route he knew so well back home. 

He knew Maine, knew it more than he wanted to. Even though it had obviously changed over twenty years, morphed along with the times, there was something immutable about it that Richie just  _ saw _ . When you grew up in a place, you knew it differently. Sure, he knew how LA worked, what it was like to live in the maze of concrete and noise and light, where the sun burned down and seasons felt like more of a suggestion than a hard rule, but those were things he had learned. Maine, Derry, those were in his bones. He had driven the route back and forth from Bangor so many times as a teenager that not a moment of it surprised him as he drove back to his hometown. The road still curved the same way, his muscle memory leading him effortlessly around corners he hadn’t even looked at in decades. He knew this; it was the building blocks of who he was, so formative that if you took it away, it wouldn’t really be Richie Tozier at all. If you changed all the big moments in someone’s life, would they really be the same person? He didn’t know, but felt almost certain that he wouldn't be. Felt like if you took away Derry from him, he might have never grown up into this. But then again, what did he know? Maybe the cold, semi-rural town where he’d run the streets with a pack of kids like wild animals weren’t something that he needed to be him. Maybe he was just born bad. He doubted there was some version of him out there who was just  _ content _ . 

He was in Derry faster than he’d expected, somehow, even though he should have known exactly when he was going to get there. It felt like less, with his consciousness so disconnected and his heart somewhere else. The time slipped away from him, by the time he was passing the  _ Welcome to Derry _ sign, he felt like his mind finally caught up to him. The sudden impact was as if he’d been violently awoken from a dream and he was forced to pull over, parking his car way too hard on the side of the road just past the welcome sign.

From where he was parked, on the crest of a hill, Richie could see most of Derry laid out before him. He sat in his car, hands on his knees, staring out at it. Derry was a strange, sprawling town, the edges of it tugging out of the centre, long streets that petered out into thin points, concrete being suddenly broken off as the land abruptly made way for the farms that were on the outskirts. It reminded Richie of pictures he’d seen of neurons, a big cluster branching off and branching off, trying to make contact so it could send fucked up little messages like him out into the world…

A cop car passing by slowed to a crawl. Richie glanced out at it, thinking sourly of his general dislike of the police even before it pulled over on the other side of the road. Did he have a busted taillight? He turned away from the other car to look out the windscreen again, as if not catching eye contact with the form of the short, sunglasses-wearing cop shambling over the road towards him would stop them from reaching him. He was bitterly disappointed when there was a rap on his window. 

Richie looked up and every blood cell froze in his body.

Wearing the uniform of a patrol officer and the same shark-toothed smile he’d had when he was a teenager, was Henry Bowers. Henry fuckin’ Bowers, all grown up and just as nasty as he’d always been, was an officer of the law. Just like his old man. 

_ Figures _ , Richie thought, as he rolled down the window.  _ But maybe he won’t recognise me _ .

"Could it be?  _ No _ ," Henry drawled, leaning on the top of Richie's car. He had not grown up to be tall, but he had a solid bulk to him that made Richie think you could hit him with a car and the car would be the loser. "Richie Tozier? The comedian? No, it  _ couldn't _ be you. What would a big shot like you be doing in a little town like Derry?"

The predatory look on Bowers' face made Richie feel like his skin was on too tight. He was holding onto the steering wheel for dear life, like he might suddenly get a chance to make good his escape at a moment's notice. 

"Hi, Bowers," Richie said, trying to make himself smile without looking like his skeleton was going to jump out of his body.

"That's Officer Bowers to you," Bowers said. "I asked you a question."

"What? You need a permission slip to get into Derry now?"

It was meant to be funny but there was no humour in Bowers' eyes, just a sick, lecherous desire to keep exerting power over Richie. He leered at Richie through the window.

"Haven't changed, huh? Still think you're funny?" Bowers smiled. "I can be funny too, Tozier. I can be real fuckin' funny."

"Oh, suddenly I don't feel like laughing," Richie said. 

"I'll decide when you laugh. Why are you  _ here _ , Tozier? This was a nice town without people like you."

"High school reunion." Richie talked through gritted teeth.

"Cute. Didn't realise you graduated high school, Tozier."

Jesus Christ he was being called stupid by fucking Henry Bowers. It really didn't get lower than this.

"Yeah, sometimes it feels like high school never ends," Richie said. 

Bowers laughed and Richie stayed with a rigor mortis grin, until Bowers slapped the roof of the car and put his stupid fucking reflective shades back on. 

"Guess I'll see you around," he said. "Trashmouth." 

Richie sat and watched until Henry Bowers had climbed back into his car and drove past, off to beat police dogs to death for fun or whatever the fuck he was getting up to on the outskirts of town. It wasn't until Bowers was long gone that Richie allowed himself to get back on the road and actually pass through into Derry. He wanted crossing the invisible border that defined the Derry boundary to feel more significant, but really all the significance had come from running into Bowers. He just got back and he was already starting to feel better about having left. 

"Guess I was right," he said to himself, and found it didn't bring him any joy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is souk eye by the gorillaz
> 
> also if youre wondering about richie's hair, he looks like [this.](https://twitter.com/rorschachisgay/status/1221203093825691649?s=20) i make the au i make the choices. come fuck with me.
> 
> henry bowers being a cop because he had never been driven to kill by pennywise was a very specific horrible idea that was haunting me as soon as i thought of this au so i had to write it. 
> 
> anyway... i hope you enjoy the next part of this... adventure? it's something.


	15. 2014: Now, back in our town as a castaway/I'm reminded of the time it all fell in line

Richie woke up in the room he'd rented at the Derry Townhouse, the kind of bed and breakfast that sold itself on being in a nice old building and but served you slightly warmed up white bread from the supermarket and claimed it was toast, and hoped you wouldn't notice the cobwebs in the corners and the cracks in the tiles that were filled with murk. It was Derry all over, really. A perfect nutshell encapsulation of this shithole. As a kid, that layer of deceit where it presented itself as a homey small town filled with good, honest, down-to-earth folks while really being flooded by a bubbling tar of abuse and misery, had been the most sickening, unconscionable crime ever committed. After living in LA for years, he understood every town was like that, really. LA was just bigger and prettier. There was nothing special about Derry; the whole reason for coming was to understand that.

He took a shower and went to get some breakfast. Leaving the safety of his hotel room and standing on the landing outside, he tried to let the feeling of being back in Derry really sink in. He wasn't entirely sure what he was waiting for; it was like when he had driven over the town limits and expected there to be something that happened, as if Derry was miles in the air and his ears needed to pop. But there was still nothing. He told himself again that it was because Derry was  _ just a town _ , it was a place on the map, it was a fuck-ugly town built up because it was a good place to trap beavers and beat them to death for their skins, had never risen above that level, would never rise over that level, just another miserable little semi-rural town full of people who aspired to nothing and died ten feet from where they were born. All the seriousness, the grandness of his emotions, how leaving the town had made him feel both like he was dying and like he was killing all his friends, that had been because he  _ eighteen _ . Everything felt that important when you were eighteen. He was thirty-eight now. 

He headed downstairs, telling himself that he was going to stop being so fucking ridiculously self-serious and anxiously jingling his car keys in his pocket. At the bottom of the stairs, in the lobby, a woman with a sheen of glossy red hair was standing by the door, checking her phone. Richie stopped, one foot on the floor and one on the bottom step, finding that his mind was blank because a sweep of warmth had wiped everything from him except the instinctive love he felt when he saw his friend, a force that was like muscle memory for his heart.

“Begosh and begorrah, if it isn’t the Marsh girl! What a sight for sore eyes ye are,” Richie said, in the most comically awful Irish accent anyone had ever done, which was possibly the most embarrassing way you could ever introduce yourself to someone you hadn’t seen in nearly twenty years. 

But Beverly turned around and her face -- holy fuck she was beautiful -- cracked into a huge smile, not a trace of anger or bitterness, only the glow of happiness that he was really  _ here _ . 

"Richie!" She said. 

He took the last few steps towards her to hug her, throwing his arms around her shoulders and pulling her close. She hugged him back before stepping back to get a good look at him, still holding his hands.

"Wow, Rich," she said. "You got so old."

"Ah, fuck, thanks Bev. That's exactly what I wanted one of my oldest and most beautiful friends to say to me after twenty years."

Beverly laughed. "I'm sorry! I haven't seen you since I was in LA back… God, when was it?"

"2002? Two thousand and too long."

Neither of them said that it was obviously Richie's fault this was the case. It was just understood -- by him, at least. Beverly only beamed at him, and he was so genuinely happy to see her he couldn't even really be angry with himself. He just loved her, and wanted her to love him. 

"I had no idea you were staying here," Bev said. "Ben's here too. We were just about to go out and get breakfast."

"He is?" Richie said.

"I am."

The man who had just come down the stairs behind Richie did not look like Ben. Ben Hanscom was small and soft, like a little bird. This guy was tall, lean, and chiselled. He looked like a model. Richie's eyes bugged out of his head in shock.

"Yeah, I know," Ben said.

"Give a guy some warning next time," Richie said. "Come here."

He hugged Ben, a little awkwardly because of the step between them, trying not to think about how he could very easily lay his head on Ben's toned chest from this angle. Actually, it was probably a bad idea to think about Ben's toned chest at all. 

"When did you get in?" Ben said.

"Last night. You?" 

"Yesterday afternoon. Are you going to come get breakfast with us?"

“Benjamin, there is nothing on Earth that would make me happier than going to get pancakes that are a little too dry and the world's saltiest scrambled eggs from Lou's Diner with you two.”

"Lou's closed a few years ago, I think," Beverly said.

“Then I guess my only other option is ritual suicide,” Richie said. 

He didn't kill himself, but he did go with Ben and Bev to a cafe in the middle of town. Beverly had toasted tea cakes, Richie had french toast, and Ben asked if he could have egg whites, which made the waitress stare at him blankly before he meekly conceded that a regular omelette would be fine. It struck Richie as sad that Ben wasn't more secure in what he wanted, and then considered if Ben had  _ wanted  _ that shit at all. He poured sugar into the coffee he'd ordered.

The last he had seen Beverly was in 2002, he'd remembered correctly, when she was chasing down gainful employment. She’d been interviewing with a couple of places in LA and he’d had her over, the two of them trying to do years’ worth of catching up in a couple of days. It had been so easy and unawkward that it made the fact they hadn’t met up again in over a decade seem ridiculous. There was no real explanation as to why they hadn’t, only that once Beverly wasn’t close by, so when the hard work of keeping up with someone fell on Richie’s shoulders he could easily find a way to give up. Retreat. Be alone again. And fuck, he hadn’t seen  _ Ben  _ since 1994. He didn’t like the idea that in their group there were particular people who meant more to each other than others, but he figured that had to be the case, if Ben had been the first to vanish from his life and Stan the last. Another thing to feel guilty about.

“So, did your plan work out?” Richie asked Bev.

“Oh my God,” She said, putting her cup of tea back down on the counter and looking at Ben with a huge smile. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“It’s crazy we were thinking like that when we were so young,” Ben said. He was a little flushed.

“You and Ben were going to graduate and then go off on some incredible romance and get married. You were very confident,” Richie said, half-grinning. He couldn’t tell if he was being mean, or not. “Don’t worry, I didn’t follow up on my childhood promise of marrying Pamela Anderson either.”

Ben and Beverly glanced at each other and then back to him.

“We aren’t married  _ yet _ ,” Beverly said, delicately. She raised her hand to show off the diamond ring on her finger. 

Richie stared at them blankly. “You’re fucking kidding me. You weren’t together last time I saw you.”

Beverly smiled at Ben from under her eyelashes. Ben scratched the back of his neck, looking remarkably flustered for a grown man. 

“We weren’t,” Ben said. “But uh, five years ago I was in New York supervising construction. When we both ran into each other… It was kind of all at once.”

They’d actually done it. As a teenager, Richie had believed with absolute certainty that the two of them would make it, but as an adult he’d moved on to believing that things like that were childish fantasies. He didn’t really know what to say now, not having fully reckoned with the idea that his childhood beliefs might wind up being true. 

“That’s… Fucking crazy. Congrats,” Richie said. “You know you don’t have to stick to promises you made when you were kids, though? No one’s going to be mad you didn’t follow through with your promise to marry your seventeen year old fiancée.”

“Please word it differently next time you say that,” Ben said.

“Maybe sometimes you can know what you want even when you’re a kid,” Beverly said, a little pointedly. “I knew I wanted to study fashion when I was eighteen.”

The comparison made Richie uncomfortable. The waitress came to refill the drinks and he latched onto the opportunity to change the subject, feeling a little guilty for dodging the subject of his friends’ personal lives. He was happy for them, of course, but he needed time to process before he could really take in what it all meant.

“You want to tell me what you guys have been doing for twenty years?” He said. “Other than pining over me, of course.”

“We  _ did _ miss you,” Beverly said, which made Richie play-pretend at being bashful to cover up the fact her words hit a little deeper than he would like to admit. “You better have been busy this entire time.”

“You know I have been,” Richie said. “I’ve got the show now. And I’m going to do a stand-up tour in a couple of months.”

“That’s great, Rich.”

“And I hope to God you’ve never seen the show. What about you, Ben?”

“I work for a large architecture firm in New York, now. I’m hoping to work my way up to partner pretty soon,” Ben said. “I have seen the show, sorry.”

“Fashion design. High-end women's fashion. It’s a small company, but we’re doing well,” Beverly said. “And so have I. Sorry, Rich. It was nice to see you again, even if you were mostly making jokes about dicks.”

“Well, you have to be used to that.”

Their food arrived and they broke conversation for a second to make sure it was all up to scratch. It was fine. Richie wondered if the pricey food in LA was actually that much better than the food here or if he was just used to not thinking about how much he was spending and what that money was actually going on. He wasn’t rich by Hollywood standards but he was definitely comfortable enough to not have to pinch his pennies, which suited Richie just fine because he was too impulsive by far to be any good at saving them. This meant that, like a lot of comedians and actors, he was probably going to have to work until he dropped dead. But that was fine; he suspected he’d go fucking crazy if he ever retired.

The conversation lingered around work, how they’d ended up where they were. Beverly’d had a long chain of internships and positions where she didn’t get to do a single thing more than fetch coffee before she’d managed to get to a place where her ideas and designs were taken seriously, and she got to do things she liked. She had a real gleam of pride around her work, like she had the confidence to know that what she did was good. Richie found himself instinctively proud of her; even after years apart there was a joy in her doing well. Ben had had it easier; Richie didn’t know if it was skill, luck, or a bit of both, only that Ben had landed a good position and managed to work his way up without much worrying about whether or not he’d ‘make it’, right up until he’d transferred to work for a New York firm so he could be closer to Beverly. 

Richie’s own story was more convoluted, filled with the inconsistencies and ups and downs of any area of showbiz. He found his story unremarkable; Ben and Beverly were more intrigued by the difficulty and uncertainty of a career where pissing the wrong guy off at a party could fuck you over for years. There was something fun in getting out of the LA bubble and being reminded that the world he’d been living in for two decades was crazy by most standards. He figured he needed to get back into the real world a lot more. It might do him some good. 

They skirted delicately around the topic of relationships mostly in thanks to Riche steering the boat away whenever possible, though Ben did show them a photograph of the son he’d had with an ex-girlfriend, a seven year old boy named Jesse who had the same contemplative eyes that Richie remembered seeing in the Ben of his childhood. There was a strange pit in the bottom of Richie’s stomach when he thought about Ben being a father; the last time he’d seen Ben he’d been barely more than a child, and there was an inherent wonder and terror in the way time moved. 

After eating they idled; they were meeting the others for dinner at six, but there were still a good few hours in the day. Ben and Beverly proposed almost simultaneously that Richie come with them that day and he wondered if they were on babysitting duty, afraid that if he got out of their sight he might vanish again, a dog slipping its leash and becoming lost in the woods.

They went on a walking tour of Derry. Richie kept thinking about those corny ghost trails you got, wandering through backstreets looking at places where the dead were supposed to haunt the place. This was scarier, having to stand on the street and look at a place that was familiar and slowly piece together that you had known it once, but every part of it that you had known had been replaced, bit by bit, until there was none of the original left at all. It was like the old question; if you change the handle of a broom and then the head of a broom, is it still the same broom? If you change the stores on a street, the people who owned them, the paving stones, and the street lights, is it still the same place where you once had the shit kicked out of you for holding a boy’s hand? 

The cinema had closed down, the front boarded up. The video store was gone. The hospital had tripled in size, mutated into a sprawling complex until Richie couldn’t even see where the original building had stood. The high school, on the other hand, looked exactly the same, which was depressing for other reasons entirely. So many of the stores and houses had changed hands a half-dozen times; Richie didn’t know if it would have been more disconcerting to watch it all change year by year than it was to jump into the deep end, exposed to a place that had no memory of him. 

Both Ben and Beverly made a far more concerted effort to stay in touch than Richie ever had; before they’d begun dating Ben had been returning almost every year. Beverly returned far less, but mentioned that they hosted the others in New York regularly, and that they had both been back for Christmas just gone. They made observations of small things that had changed in even those few months, a store shutting down, a house being rebuilt, which made Richie dwell on the vastness of the time he’d been away and how much things had shifted since then, in ways he would never even be able to see. 

It was so easy to know them both again. He didn’t know if being around your childhood friends just made you a child again, but in so many ways nothing had changed at all. Beverly still laughed the same way she had always done, Ben still had that shy way of looking at people, like he was just happy to be brought in at all. Richie was still fucking annoying.

They didn’t have much for lunch, just grabbed something quick before they braved wandering down to the Kissing Bridge. Richie was alarmed to find it had a huge hole in it.

“What the fuck happened?” He said, kicking at the chainlink fence that was propped up over the hole in the side where the wood fence had been torn right through. “It looked like a bomb went off here.”

“Just old, I guess,” Ben said. “Looks like the wood is rotten.”

“They’ll fix it,” Beverly said. 

“Never be the same, though,” Richie said.

“Wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Ben said.

When Richie glanced where he was looking, he noticed that the R+E was still there, carved into the other side of the bridge, faint and faded but still there. He looked back at Ben, who said nothing, just smiled faintly. Richie hunched his shoulders and spun on his heel.

“I’m gonna go do something by myself,” he said.

“What? What do you mean?” Ben said. 

“Just… Gotta check some stuff out,” Richie said.

“Don’t forget dinner is at six,” Beverly said, with a tone that implied she was going to be annoyed if Richie didn’t show. 

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Miss Scarlet,” Richie called over his shoulder as he tramped up the path back to town.

In his mind, being on his own would be a relief, but the second he left them behind a kind of melancholy settled over him and he found himself listlessly wandering back towards the town centre. He didn’t know where to go, but without really thinking about it he found himself walking to where Secondhand Rose had been, the memory of the weird old junk shop something that cropped up fairly often in Richie’s brain. In his mind’s eye the store was a huge, dark maze of furniture and old people’s knick-knacks and garbage, all with Pete sitting at the centre like the contented eye of the storm. Pete’s face wavered in his memory between a menacing, gargoyle of a figure, shadows making him an unknowable threat, and being a normal man, who just happened to wear a sympathetic smile that read as a threat to a scared little boy.

Richie was astonished to find the store still standing. It looked in good condition too, the words freshly stencilled on the window and the interior slightly better organised than the inhospitable labyrinth of the old store. He thought maybe he would see Pete when he walked inside, and found himself oddly filled with the fear he would  _ disappoint _ the old man. It felt like a crazy thing to care about, especially considering there was no way in hell Pete would remember him, but Richie had never really forgotten the first other gay man he ever knew. He pushed the door open, heading inside.

It still smelled like an old attic, and there was a swirl of dust motes caught in the light through the window when the breeze from the door disturbed it. There was a desk at the back of the room, and there was an old man in a trucker’s cap sitting behind it. Richie took a few nervous steps towards him. The man glanced up from the book he was reading and watched Richie absently.

“Help you?” He said.

“Yeah… I… I used to live around here when I was a kid?” Richie said. “And there used to be a guy who worked here called Pete.”

“Oh, that’d be my brother,” the store owner said. “Me and him took over after our Dad passed. He’s retired now, though. Lives down in Cape Cod.”

Richie nodded slowly, awkwardly jamming his hands in his pockets. The man behind the counter waited a moment but didn’t offer any smalltalk. 

“Was that all you were wanting?” He said.

“Yeah. Sorry, I just… I worked here as a kid for a bit,” he lied. “So thought maybe I’d catch up… But I’ll… Go now.”

“Suit yourself.”

After that insanely uncomfortable interaction Richie turned around figuring he would just run for the hills and maybe never, ever come back here, but that was before he noticed the picture hanging on the wall. It had been easily twenty years since he’d seen it, but even where it was, on a wall covered with antique photographs and terrible old printed art, he could spot it easily. A photo of a streak of light that was actually two people, holding onto each other as they fell, the water rising up to meet them, set in a polished wood frame. The tag on the photo said _ portrait of two boys in free fall, artist unknown _ , and that it was priced at $15.

Something about the combination of seeing the childhood photo he had held and looked at so many times and the fact it was only worth fifteen bucks made Richie feel like he was experiencing a severe fever. The idea of actually buying the photograph didn’t occur to him; he was already out the door and halfway down the street before the fact he could have bought it dawned on him, but by then he had already convinced himself it wasn't the authentic thing. Why would something he left at his parents' house be at a junk shop? He'd told them to throw out whatever he left at their house, and he hadn't doubted they'd follow through with that. They weren't very precious about preserving his things. The whole thing was just a weird coincidence. 

Out of morbid curiosity, he decided to go and see his old house. His parents had left a long time ago so there was no real reason to either go or to be afraid of going, but walking there he felt both afraid and a desperate need to face his fear. There was that insistence again in his mind;  _ your feelings are stupid and they do not matter. Get over it _ . It made no sense to be nervous; he was not an abused child, he’d never dealt with the crap Beverly or Eddie had. 

That was also a weird thought, being able to reflect on their childhoods and actually say fuck, the reason we all felt afraid and sick around Bev and Eddie’s parents is because they  _ were _ wrong. They were monsters to those kids, and the rest of them had done nothing. Not that any of them  _ could _ do anything; they had been friends to Beverly and Eddie when they needed it and that was about all any teenager could do. Confronting someone’s evil parent rarely worked out as neatly and tidily as it did in the movies. Then again, he’d  _ had  _ a chance to take Eddie away from this, and he’d fucked it up. Familiar guilt scalded Richie’s mind.

Standing outside his childhood home, on the street opposite out of an anxiety about getting too close, he was unsurprised by how little the house had changed. He didn’t know if he was glad or disappointed. If the entire thing was unrecognisable maybe that would be easier, because then he could just tell himself  _ well Rich, the old childhood is truly dead and gone, now you can forget about it forever.  _ But it was still there, the clapboard outside freshly painted white, the same old tree in the front yard. There was a new car in the front drive, a new satellite dish on the roof, but it was undeniably the Tozier family home. Looking at it, he was oddly unemotional. He had been a little concerned that he might do something incredibly horrific and cry, not that he’d actually  _ cried  _ in years, but he found he was almost completely unaffected by looking at the house. 

It dawned on him that he hadn’t ever really cared about this house. It was a stock 1960’s built suburban three bedroom with a garage, and every house on the block was its exact duplicate. The house didn’t matter. He had never really liked it, what he had liked were the memories, and in the final few years living here less and less of those were good ones. For a couple of years before he’d left he’d stopped having friends come over and then, twenty years later, he realised his reason for doing so; he had been packing up and getting ready to leave long before he had even decided to go, he’d taken away any chance that he would start to care about this house like someone keeping an emergency bag under the bed.

Richie laughed to no one in particular. A woman walking her dog down the street gave him a funny look, but he ignored her. This was  _ his  _ moment of stunning revelation. He dawdled on the sidewalk for a second longer, thinking about how Eddie’s house was only a couple of blocks away. He could walk it in seconds… But what for? He didn’t know whoever would be living there now, and he didn’t really have a lot of fond memories of Sonia Kaspbrak’s homey presence. He wondered if she was dead.  _ His _ parents were still alive, but didn’t have a clue about her. Was it wrong of him to kind of hope she was dead? 

In the end he headed back towards town. Dinner was at six.

* * *

It was a Chinese restaurant called The Jade of the Orient which was sat where a run-down dollar store had been twenty years ago. Richie had obviously never heard of it, but it was attractive enough, lavishly decorated and playing calming music when he walked inside that reminded him he probably didn’t need to be so stressed about seeing his friends. He told the hostess he was looking for Denbrough and got led to a private room away from the buffet area. He couldn’t imagine Eddie eating at a buffet and the thought made him grin to himself, the mental image of that half-pint kid listing off all the potential threats of bacteria that came from sharing food… It wouldn’t be that half-pint kid, though, would it? It would be an adult man, one that Richie might not even truly recognise. 

Two people were already there when Richie walked in. Mike and Stan, both thirty-eight years old and both exactly like themselves and exactly like people Richie had never met. Mike was still just as tall and handsome, with neatly cropped hair and a nicely fitted denim shirt that made him look both rustic and a little more deliberately styled than he had as a kid. Stan still had curly hair and now a pair of frameless glasses, slightly older, slightly different, still wearing the same ‘don’t start your shit with me again, Richie Tozier’ expression. 

“Whoa, I was looking for my friends from school,” Richie said, “but there’s just these two old men in the room.”

“Richie Tozier, oh my God,” Stan said, voice dripping with so much sarcasm someone was going to break their neck sliding in it. “Can I get an autograph?”

“You guys can’t even stop for one second, huh?” Mike said.

“Just you wait until Eddie gets here. I remember how the two of them always were,” Stan said.

Mike bounded around the table and pulled Richie into a hug, and even Stan came around to welcome him properly. It was nice, actually. Not a lot of good hugs back in LA -- Jesus, that was probably the saddest thing he’d ever had run through his mind. He did hug them back, though.

“Hey, Staniel, is that a wedding ring? Were you the first Loser to actually tie someone down?” Richie said.

“How am I not surprised you’re married?” Stan said. “Yes. Her name is Patty. You’ll probably meet her at the reunion. She is a kindergarten teacher. We have four kids.”

“Four kids? Fuck me, are you trying to found the next twelve tribes by yourself?” Richie said. 

“No, and I won’t fuck you,” Stan said.

Mike barked with laughter and Richie feigned agony, at which point Ben and Beverly entered. The reintroductions with Mike and Stan were understandably less dramatic; the four of them had seen each other a lot more recently than Richie had seen any of them. It hit him that he was really the odd one out, a realisation that made him immediately very sad, but that he understood was entirely his fault. Stan had been sending him messages on the high holidays for years, even after some of the others had been put off by his wall of disinterested silence. He thought then, very sorrowfully, that he really loved Stan. He loved all of them, and fitted into them all so neatly that despite being out of step with their lives, the space for him that existed in the group dynamic ready to welcome him home immediately. 

Then Bill walked in, looking handsome and slightly messy, as though he’d been caught in the middle of something when he was ushered into the restaurant and was approaching this situation like it was a new surprise, but he looked bright and happy and excited to be here. There was an enormous amount of relief on his face when he saw Richie, as if he hadn’t been sure that it would work, if he would show up at all. 

“Jesus,” Bill said. “Richie Tozier.”

“In the flesh.”

“Glad they found a way to get you out of that TV you were trapped in.”

“Is this you now? Dad jokes?”

“I have enough kids to tell them to.”

“When did we all get so fuckin’ grown up?” Richie said, obliging Bill with another hug.

“I don’t know if you ever did,” Beverly said.

“What is  _ this? _ ” Bill said, tugging lightly on Richie’s ponytail. Richie slapped his hand away.

“I had my dick moved for easier access.”

“Point proved,” Ben said to Beverly. 

The six of them sat around the table, a waitress coming through to ask for their drink orders. Richie made the very sensible adult decision to  _ not drink too much _ ; he’d have a beer or something now, and that would be it. There was something woefully shameful about going back to your hometown and getting goddamn white girl wasted in front of your childhood friends, who were all far, far happier than you were. Not that they knew that. 

Or he hoped they didn’t. He hoped his sadness was not what he thought; a stink that clung to him like sour, old laundry, something unpleasant that followed him always. 

He didn’t want to be the first one to ask about Eddie, but he was wondering where he was. Almost as if he’d sensed Richie’s desire to know, Stan asked about it. It sounded far more casual coming from him than it ever possibly could coming from Richie.

“Oh, he said he couldn’t make it, sorry,” Bill said. 

“How come?” Ben said, looking a little startled.

“The… Situation with… You know,” Bill said.

The bottom dropped out of Richie’s stomach. Oh, God. Eddie was _avoiding_ _him_. That had to be it; he’d gotten second thoughts about seeing Richie again and backed out of it. Richie leaned back in his chair and tried not to look too obviously upset, the disappointment settling over him like a well-worn blanket. He called the waitress over and asked for another drink. 

Outrageously, people didn't stop living life if you weren't watching them. Mike owned a bookstore in Bangor, Stan worked for a big time accountants in Chicago, Bill had been teaching for over ten years. Ben, Bill and Stan swapped photos of their kids, seven between the three of them. The rhythm of names that Richie was struggling to keep straight in his head because of the deluge of information.  _ Jesse-Leah-Daniel-Tommy-Violet-Sophie-Naomi _ . Faces that were sometimes so startlingly like his memories of his childhood friends it was like looking at a ghost; he held a picture of Stan's oldest son and felt like he was seeing thirteen year old Stan all over again, just as serious-eyed and thoughtful as the little boy in his memory. 

They were all fascinated by Richie, all of them almost desperate to unpack the years of mystery and distance that had turned him from a friend they knew better than anyone into a shade, half in the light of the known and half something else, something they didn't recognise. They didn't recognise him, but they longed to. They had seen so much of each others' lives, stuff Richie had missed and would never be able to catch up on, and were as desperate to fill the gap he had left in their lives as he was remorseful for leaving.

There was so much to catch up on. There was so much he wanted to say. Childishly,  _ you’re not mad at me?  _ kept ringing in his head, even though he knew well enough by now that they weren’t. But there was so much else. What was your wedding like? When did you propose? When did you decide to have kids? How was graduation? What made you decide to stay in Derry, did you make a decision or just realise you were two kids in and fifteen years into a job, and you didn’t want to make a change now? What was your first cell phone? Do you go on vacation? When was the moment in your adult life when you decided that you weren’t going to get  _ really  _ drunk anymore? What was the first time you were fired? What was your first car? What are the things now you see that make you think ‘fuck, I’m getting old’?

Richie reached for another drink, over and over.

He told a lot of stories. The time he'd accidentally dropped a tray of coffee over Adam Sandler, missing out on being in a Judd Apatow movie because he'd been too hungover to go to the callback, getting dumped by a girl live on air during a talk show. Stories that made him look like an asshole, like a guy who was impulsive and wild, who made constant mistakes and fucked up his own life out of sheer stupidity. The more he talked the more it dawned on him how much he talked about himself like the biggest fuck-up he knew. He saw he was doing that, but he kept talking and he kept drinking, and he kept trying to make everyone laugh at him.

They noticed he was alone. You couldn't not see it. There were no long-term partners in his stories, no good friends. Just people who were tired of Richie Tozier, everyone's clown. 

It was a good night, though. He didn't spend the night morose and sulking; it was a celebration, after all. Bill laughed until soda came out his nose; Beverly and Richie did imitations of teachers that made everyone scream; Mike had stories of what happened to old classmates and people they knew that had them all losing it; Ben and Stan had better memories for the stupid details of things they'd done than any of them. It was everything Richie had been sure it wouldn't be. He slipped back into the group as if he had never left at all, every part of who he was as a young man resurfacing, like throwing the dust cover off an old car and finding the engine full of gas. 

They all left at about nine; they were seeing each other the next day, so there was no need for a big, emotional goodbye. Richie was drunk enough that it was very noticeable when he left the restaurant, leaning companionably on Ben as he walked out, unsure if he did actually need the support to stand up or not. Bev and Ben did both look deeply concerned, and offered to give Richie a ride back to the Derry Townhouse with them. Richie refused automatically, managing to unravel himself from Ben and stand on his own two feet. The plan he was formulating was already in his mind.

"Where are you going to go?" Beverly said, frowning deeply as Richie hailed a passing taxi.

"I'm just going on a little farewell tour," Richie said.

"You sure it can't wait until the morning, buddy?" Ben said, grinning nervously.

"I'll be back at the hotel soon, don't even worry about it," Richie said. He waved jauntily when he climbed into the taxi, pretending to not see the way Ben and Beverly looked at each other, the way Bill, standing in the doorway of the restaurant, shook his head.

He told the taxi driver to take him to the Kaspbrak's house. His earlier decision to avoid Eddie's childhood home was sitting badly with him; the fact he had felt kind of  _ afraid _ of the building pissed him off. It was like his old childhood home, he told himself. Just an old house with someone else walking all over his childhood ghosts. He'd knock on the door and tell them he grew up there and then feel nothing and go home. It had been that easy when he'd seen his old house. 

The Kaspbrak home looked exactly like he remembered. This was unsurprising, though he thought he wouldn't have been disappointed if he'd discovered the entire thing had collapsed and fallen down a giant hole in the ground in a freak earthquake. He gave the taxi driver a fifty and got out of the cab, walking up the front path. He didn't really have much of a plan of what he would say, only that the chance to say  _ hey, I was here as a kid once, now all that is dead and gone _ felt important.  _ This was part of my life once, now it never will be again. Have a good one. _

The lights were on. It was gone 9PM, but that wasn't so late, he figured. Not for five minutes of their time. Tiny house like this, it would probably be some little old lady or something, probably appreciate the company… He knocked on the door, trying to comb his fingers through his hair and rub his eyes so he looked a little less like a totally blasted middle-aged alcoholic. He knew he was drunk, but he was still capable of standing and talking, and he didn't think he was gonna puke, so it was probably fine. 

The door swung open and then Eddie Kaspbrak was standing there staring him in the face.

"What the fuck?" Richie said.

" _ Richie?! _ " Eddie said.

Twenty years on but he looked  _ exactly  _ the same. Shortish, slim, neat black hair scraped back against his head. He was wearing an unbearably prim and proper polo shirt and pressed slacks, everything about him screaming  _ I shop at the GAP _ . Mouth prone to worrying, heavy brows that would sit low over his huge, dark eyes, perpetually wearing a deer-in-the-headlights look, like life was about to run him down at any moment. 

"What are you doing here?" Richie said.

"I  _ live  _ here?" Eddie said. 

"You live  _ here _ ?" A vision of Eddie still trapped in the shadow of his mother, now an elderly woman, still crying out for him to not stray more than a few feet away was dancing through Richie's mind like a bad puppet show. 

"Yes? I inherited it after Mom died." Eddie said. "Why did you come here if you didn't want to see me?"

"Of course I want to see you. Why the fuck didn’t you come to dinner, man?” Richie said. “Are you avoiding me?”

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” Eddie said. “Are you coming inside or are you going to wake up all the neighbours?”

“I can do both. I’m good at it.”

On the inside the house had changed, which Richie was immediately thankful for. If it had been a shrine to the late Mrs Kaspbrak Richie thought he would have had a complete breakdown. But the house was clean and fairly minimal, pretty unremarkable looking in the grand scheme of things. Very little about it would have marked it out from any other house in suburban America; plain cream walls, clean hardwood floors, polished fittings. It was a small house, but it felt bigger than it had when Richie was a kid, no longer a nightmare of clutter-induced claustrophobia. It had been dragged kicking and screaming into the modern day; something about Eddie systematically removing all the signs of his mother from the house was kind of relieving, even if the final result felt less like Eddie Kaspbrak and more like something you'd see in a catalogue.

Eddie backed up into the living room, moving like he didn't want to take his eyes off Richie, face frozen into a half-smile. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Richie observed.

"What?" Richie said.

"What?" Eddie said.

"You're staring at me."

"You're staring at  _ me _ ."

"Take a picture, it'll last longer."

"Who would want a picture of your mug?"

"Uh, loads of people? I'm famous?" Richie flipped his unimpressive mane of hair.

"Wow, took you all of ten seconds to mention that. Going for the gold in the gloating Olympics?"

"What do I win?"

"A gold medal?"

"I don't need one of those, I have an Emmy," Richie said, smugly.

"Uh, you didn't actually win the Emmy, your show only got a nomination," Eddie said, even more smugly.

"You keep track of that shit?" 

"Of course I do. How many famous childhood friends do I have? I wanted to go into the office and tell everyone I saw you wet your pants at a sleepover once."

Richie cracked up and fell back onto the couch, Eddie sitting in one of the chairs by him. The room looked radically different without Sonia’s La-Z-Boy parked in front of the ancient TV, without the heavy lace curtains choking out the light. It was more spacious now, more tuned to modern adult sensibilities. It was so unrecognisable that sometimes Richie would forget it was the same house, but then his eyes would focus on the shape of the room, the spacing of the windows and doors, would be reminded that although Eddie had changed the paint and the furnishings, he still existed within the same prison. 

Where had that come from? This wasn’t a prison. It was a house. Richie was just projecting his own weird shit onto Eddie’s life, when Eddie looked like he was doing fine. 

“Why didn’t you come to dinner?” Richie said.

“Ah, something came up…” Eddie said. “But you’re here, now. Can I get you a drink? I have… Uh, I don’t have any beer actually. Or any wine. Or…”

“Do you have a kale smoothie?” Richie said, with all the sarcastic grace of someone falling over while ice skating. 

“ _ Ha ha _ . I think I have… Soda?”

“Forget it, forget it. I don’t need a drink.  _ Talk  _ to me, asshole. Why the fuck did you invite me back?” Richie said.

“Why do you think? Bill started talking about a high school reunion, I have six childhood best friends, and only five I see regularly,” Eddie said. He was sitting with his legs crossed at the ankles, oddly restrained and formal for a guy in his own home. 

“And only one of them used to touch your weiner,” Richie said. Eddie gave him a spectacularly dark look. “Regretting asking me back, yet?”

“Yes. Look, if you think I’ve spent the last twenty years crying over you every night, you’ve got the wrong idea. I just thought the reunion might be a good way to convince you to come back home.”

“It’s alright man, you don’t have to no homo your own high school reunion,” Richie said. Eddie made a face like someone standing in a puddle while wearing socks. “I only came out here to tell you someone stole your picket fence.”

“We never had a picket fence.”

“How do you keep in the 2.5 kids?”

“I don’t have any kids.”

"You remember the photo of us as kids? The one where we're jumping off the cliff?"

Eddie's face changed for a second, but the drunken swirl of Richie's mind made it impossible to discern what it meant. Just the twitch of a mouth, the brief widening of eyes.

"Course I do," Eddie said.

"I saw one just like it in the old junk shop. Isn't that crazy? That I even remember some old photo?" 

Richie couldn’t tell if Eddie was actually enjoying talking to him or not. He wished he had another drink. His face felt weird. Was he smiling? He thought he was smiling, but his face felt oddly stiff and uncomfortable.

“Is this weird?” Richie said. “Am I weirding you out?”

“Yeah, kinda,” Eddie said. “I haven’t seen you in twenty years and now you’re here, drunk, in my front room…”

"I know, it must be just like your most pornographic fantasies. I'm probably too drunk to get it up, though, so-"

"Beep fucking  _ beep _ , Jesus  _ Christ _ ."

There was a creak on the stairs and Richie jumped, making a noise not unlike an oversized bird, not expecting to hear anyone else in the house.

“Eddie? What’s going on?” A woman’s voice called from the hallway.

“Eds, what the fuck is that? The ghost of Sonia Kaspbrak here for me to finally make an honest woman out of her?” Richie said.

The woman in the doorway was definitely not Sonia Kaspbrak. She was tall and had the look of an intense athlete about her, someone who carefully maintained a very precise amount of body fat through strict control over everything she ate and drank. Her chestnut hair was laid so perfectly in place that Richie doubted it would move if she was in the middle of a hurricane, and her blouse and slacks were the exact perfect blend of fashionable and inoffensive to be completely, perfectly forgettable. She looked like she was very active on Instagram. 

“Excuse me?” She said, glaring from under perfectly groomed eyebrows. “Who is this? Eddie?”

“Oh, God, sorry. Richie, this is my wife Clara, Clara this is my friend Richie. He’s in town for the school reunion.”

Of course he had a fucking wife. Eddie had said he was going to have a wife. Nothing about this was surprising. Richie couldn’t be surprised about this any more than he could be surprised that after the fiftieth time he pressed the button in the Skinner box he got an electric shock. He was standing up, though he wasn’t really sure why, staring down at this woman like he was trying to make up his mind about whether or not to charge her. She was looking back at him like she was trying to make a decision between calling the cops or taking her chances with Maine’s stand your ground laws.

“It’s a little late to have people just dropping by,” Clara said, like Richie wasn’t even there. 

“Sorry, I was just hoping to get a chance to spirit Eddie’s wife away in the middle of the night, but he caught me,” Richie said. 

“ _ Excuse _ me?” Clara said, looking distinctly offended.

“It was a joke. It was a joke!” He winked as hard as he could and did a performative stage-whisper to Clara. “Don’t worry, I don’t think he’s onto anything.”

Clara wasn’t looking any more amused by that and Eddie’s entire face and neck were a vibrant shade of pink. There was an awful tension in the air, and every muscle in Richie’s body was aching to break it, desperate to make it break so he could breathe again and so his skeleton would stop feeling like a rusty, unoiled machine. 

“Richie’s a comedian,” Eddie said, helplessly.

“People pay for this! Can you believe that?” Richie said, gesturing at himself. “Well, they pay for the mouth. For comedy. And for sex stuff, sometimes.”

“He’s drunk,” Eddie said.

“I can tell,” Clara said. “Mr Tozier, I’m sure you’re very excited to be seeing Eddie again, but I think it’s best you left, now. It’s very late.”

The rhythm of how she spoke was giving Richie flashbacks to the times he’d been politely but forcefully removed from Sonia’s home, in the days before she started just threatening him. It was like being twelve again and making Eddie laugh until he can’t breathe only to have Sonia throw the door open and tell them  _ Richie needs to go home now, because Eddie is getting tired out _ . Funny that it was never Eddie who said he was tired.

“Hey, Eds, who does this sound like,” Richie said, shifting his voice to his best memory of Sonia Kapsbrak, that particular nasty little rasp she got in her voice when she was feeling really mean, but an exaggerated, cartoon version of it. “You better get out of my house right now before I call the police! I know your parents, you dirty little boy!”

He wanted Eddie to laugh, but Eddie looked like he was going to have a panic attack, his mouth open in horror, eyes like big black voids where humour went to die. Richie was the only one laughing. Clara was getting more and more incensed, still with rage in a way that made him think of marble statues. He felt a little proud he’d been able to piss her off this much, this quickly.

“I think you should go lie down, Rich,” Eddie said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Richie wanted to protest, but there was no protest. Eddie wasn’t trying to avoid him, but he sure was trying to make sure they only saw each other in very specific, controlled circumstances. He was Eddie’s dirty little secret. 

_ At least I’d be Eddie’s something _ , a voice said in the back of his mind, one he flinched away from like it was scalding him. 

He actually did what he was asked to, though, heading for the exit without much of a complaint. Eddie and Clara followed him the entire time he walked there and remained standing in the front door as he ambled down the path in a new and exciting version of the walk of shame. He hesitated on the sidewalk to look back at them and found that seeing Clara hovering by Eddie’s shoulder turned his stomach. She was his height, taller in heels, and he looked  _ small _ by her in a way Richie really didn’t like. 

“You ever hear about the Skinner box?” Richie called back down the path.

“What?” Eddie said. Clara looked at him like she was waiting for him to explain, but he didn’t have anything, and that just irritated her more, features in her face drawing together like a knot being tightened. 

“Forget it. See you tomorrow, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie said. He walked to the end of the block to call a taxi just to get out of their sight and so he wouldn’t have to hear the front door click shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title is Third of May by Fleet Foxes
> 
> sorry for the delay! i've been very occupied by my new project, Turtle Creek, which is a social media au (essentially a fanfic told via text messages hosted on twitter). you can enjoy that nonsense [here](https://twitter.com/turtlecreek_tv) if you want to delve into a reddie actor au. 
> 
> also all the chapters are going to be like insanely long from here on out. i am powerless to stop this.


	16. 2014: i'll take anything you want to give me, baby/i haven't told anyone/just like we promised/have you?

Richie was wearing a suit. The last time he’d worn a suit was to an awards show. He was not counting the blazer and jeans combos he wore on stage in the ‘suit’ category; this was a _ real _ suit, tailored to fit. Despite it having been made and designed to make him look good he felt violently uncomfortable in it, standing at Bill’s front door and waiting for his childhood friend to open it. He never felt at home in a suit, and the fact he was wearing one to meet up with a guy who had seen him age five wearing bunny rabbit pyjamas made him feel even more out of his body. 

Bill’s house was only a couple of blocks away from the Denbrough home of their youth. He’d lived his entire life within a mile radius. Richie’s first instinct was to say that was somehow bad, but Bill seemed plenty happy, and he went on vacation enough to be a decently well-travelled man. The fact he made that effort on the combined salaries of a teacher and a ‘systems administrator’ was more impressive. Richie wondered what his own excuse was. The house itself was about what Richie expected; a good-sized suburban family home, the grassy front yard a little past needing a trim and littered with a pair of kids bikes and a rope swing on the tree, something that gave Richie an instant burst of nostalgia.

The person who answered the door after he rapped a little tune on it with his knuckles was a short woman with jet black hair and owlish glasses. She took stock of Richie before she said anything, like she was analysing him. Two young girls were peering out of a doorway behind her, both whispering and giggling, while a large, elderly golden retriever stared at him from its chosen sleeping place halfway up the stairs. It was like the entire Denbrough guard was there to judge him.

"Do I have to pass a test to be allowed in?" Richie said. He knew he had showered and brushed his teeth, drunk coffee and was wearing a nice suit, but suddenly he was convinced that Sue was going to smell alcohol on his breath, or the weed he'd smoked five days ago, or that he'd had semi-public sex on multiple occasions. Something that would get the door slammed in his face and him barred from the nice family home.

"I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about," Sue said. "The guys talked about you coming back like it was the second coming."

"I am a Jew, but no one made me king yet. I think I'm pretty low on the list when it comes to inheriting the title. Can I come in, or are we going to break Bill's heart?"

"Bill was right," Sue said.

"About me being devastatingly handsome?"

"About you not being funny."

She gave Richie a wink and then half-bowed and swept an arm to invite him inside. Richie curtseyed in response as he walked in, much to the delight of the audience of ten year old girls watching him from the safety of the playroom. Sue offered him a hand, which was square and strong, and gave him a firm handshake. There was something very energised about her, in a focused way; she made him think immediately of someone about to embark on a triathlon. He could imagine her very easily running a navy vessel. It sounded kind of hilarious that she apparently worked a very normal office job.

“Billy, Stan and Patty are all here,” she said. The house was the carefully maintained chaos of a family with two young kids; drawings hung on the fridge, toys almost but not totally contained by trunks, photographs of family vacations on the wall not hanging completely straight. The very suspicious patch of paint on the wall that was a slightly different shade of pale green than the rest, indicating that at some point, something terrible happened to the plaster there. There was dog hair on basically everything. In short, it was nice.

The door to the backyard was open and Richie walked out to see Bill and Stan standing on the patio with some pre-party beers, overlooking a yard that contained a trampoline and a sandpit. Jesus, Bill really was embracing the dad thing. Richie wondered what a nightmare Stan's house was, with twice as many kids as this. Then again, knowing Stan, they probably spent all their time doing puzzles and junior science kits in between family camping trips.

“Rich! Get over here,” Bill said. He was overly excited to see him. 

“God, how much did that cost?” Stan said, grabbing the lapel of Richie’s blazer when he got within grabbing reach. Both of them were wearing suits, and Richie didn’t have a discerning enough eye to say more than they fitted fine, but neither of them were tailored Dior.

“I dunno,” Richie said. “I just had it around. I got it for the Emmys.”

Both Bill and Stan made noises of astonishment and Richie rolled his eyes but liked it, the immediate spirit of camaraderie that you got with being bullied by the people you loved. 

“I’m a different class of people to you now,” Richie said. 

One of Bill’s daughters was loitering outside of the backdoor, watching them all with huge, intense eyes. Bill’s eyes for sure, that same piercing blue. She was wearing jean shorts and a sweater with a lion on it, and there was a natural messiness to her hair that made him certain she was the kind of child who spent as much time as she could getting into trouble. Richie was pretty sure her name was Violet. She looked at him with the curiosity of a child, unsure if he was going to be something interesting or just another tedious adult. He liked to think he was interesting, but he didn’t know if he was necessarily interesting to a… What? Ten year old? He hadn’t been around a ten year old since he _ was _one, if you didn’t count his occasional encounters with Georgie.

“Hey,” Richie said. “I’m Richie.”

“I’m Sophie,” she said. Whoops, wrong daughter. “Do you like Minecraft?”

“Do I like _ Mine Kampf? _ Bill, what the hell are you teaching your kids?” Richie said. Stan snorted into his drink while Bill’s eyes bugged out of his head comically. Oh, this was a rich new vein of untapped humour potential. 

“Mine. Craft,” Sophie said, enunciating very clearly. “What’s Mine Camp?”

“A book by a very bad man. Richie is just making a joke,” Bill said.

“What _ is _Minecraft?” Richie said.

“Like digital Lego,” Stan said. “It’s a good creative outlet.”

“Back in my day we had real Lego, what happened to that?” Richie said.

“I have Lego,” Sophia said. “Mom and Dad say you’re famous. Are you on YouTube?”

“Tell them to get real Legos when _ you _have to clean up five hundred tiny pieces from the carpet at 10PM,” Stan muttered bitterly.

“Do _ not _look Richie up on YouTube,” Bill said.

“Christ, I’m surrounded by dads, and not in the fun way,” Richie said. 

“What’s the fun way?” Sophie said.

“Uncle Richie’s just making another joke. Go back inside, sweetheart.” Bill was looking more and more stressed by the second. It cracked Richie up. 

Sophie shrugged, apparently unoffended by the dismissal, and hopped back into the house on one foot for reasons that could only be understood by the genius mind of a small child. Bill was looking at Richie like he wanted to flay him alive, but Richie was glowing about being called _ uncle _ , and there was very little that would shatter through his ego at that moment. He’d only just gotten here, but he was already being elevated to _ uncle _ status. He was never going to let that one go.

Stan, surveying him, clearly had picked up on how pleased he was about that. He nudged Richie with his elbow.

“If you think being made an uncle sounds good now, wait until you have to manage the birthdays of seven different nieces and nephews,” he said.

“It’s fine, I’ll just send them incredibly inappropriate gifts until you guys make me stop,” Richie said. Bill made a face like he was whispering a silent prayer to God. Richie wondered how much Lego sets cost nowadays. They were interrupted by Patty and Sue. 

“The babysitter’s here,” Patty said. She was small and neat and had a softness to her that reminded Richie of a Disney cartoon; something very precisely crafted to inspire an immediate desire to protect. She looked slightly odd paired up with Stan, who was perfectly organised in the way filing cabinets were.

“Let’s get going,” Bill said. 

The babysitter was a guy of maybe nineteen or twenty, tall and svelte, who greeted Bill with a friendly “Hi Mr Denbrough” that made Richie think that not long ago this kid was in Bill’s high school classes.

“In bed by ten latest, Don,” Bill said, with a gentle warning. “And here’s an extra ten bucks in case that boyfriend of yours shows up and wants some pizza.”

Don turned gentle pink around his cheeks but smiled as well, in a way that made it clear he was proud to be teased about this, proud of having _ that boyfriend _. An old wound inside Richie stung.

“Hey, aren’t you that comedian?” Don said.

“Yeah,” Richie said.

“Your show sucks, man.” It was said with a slight twitch of the lip, an attempt at good-natured ribbing. It hadn’t been funny the first time Richie had heard it from a stranger and it wouldn’t be funny the millionth, but Richie laughed anyway.

“I know,” he said.

“Why do you do it then?” Don said, genuinely baffled in a way that was very, _ very _pie-in-the-sky teenager, and Richie thought about how much he knew this fucking kid. Richie felt bizarrely compelled to come out right then, say that he was gay too, he was in on the joke, him and Don were not that different. But that would have been absolutely insane, and a crazy way for his friends to find out, so he just shrugged.

“I got bills to pay, and they don’t let you babysit the neighbour’s kids when you’re nearly forty.”

Don grinned and then got distracted by the cheerful cry from the girls, who were clearly delighted to see him and pulled him away immediately, uninterested in their parents leaving. They lived in a safe, secure world where their parents left them with trusted friends and they could always rely on Mom and Dad to be there in the morning when they woke up. Richie was happy for them. 

The rest of them had to go to school.

* * *

They took Bill’s car, Bill and Sue sitting up front, with Richie, Stan, and Patty crammed in the back. Patty sat in the middle between Richie and Stan and Richie annoyed the fuck out of everyone by fighting with her constantly for legspace, something that she found more amusing than he would have assumed. She explained afterwards that she taught kindergarten and this reminded her a lot of that, which made Stan and Richie both crack up. She seemed so unlikely for Stan, so warm and gentle, but she had the same perceptiveness that he did and the two of them communicated so efficiently it might as well have been code.

Derry High School had been repainted but it didn’t look like much had changed. There was something distinctly surreal in being inside your old school, twenty years older and substantially bigger. Although logically Richie had known it would be, it was still strange to see how small it looked now. High school had been the most important thing in the world for him for a long time, and then one day it had simply stopped mattering at all, and it was as though its physical dimensions had shrunk to fit its withering importance. 

Walking through the corridors he followed the arrows helpfully pointing to where the main event was being held in the gymnasium, right in the heart of the school. He had not forgotten the way; it was inside him like a blueprint, a memory etched into the walls of his brain. So many times he’d walked through the exact corridors he was now, looked through the windows of doors into the same classrooms. Things were the same, in places; like Eddie’s house, the shape of the rooms were the same, the way walls curved into the floors or doors were set burned into his mind. The outside had changed, but Richie knew the bones of the building.

The others following were talking about the school; Bill was complaining about how little it had changed. They didn’t have the budget. Sue was saying the school had good foundations, whatever that meant. Patty was sweetly asking Stan about his time there. Richie felt a little disconnected; it wasn’t the others fault, all of them gamely trying to engage him in conversation, he just couldn’t concentrate, his eyes sweeping through the halls like he was on high alert and he was waiting for something to spring out at him at the last second. He wasn’t sure what exactly it would be -- there were no hidden murderers in the halls of Derry High -- but he didn’t feel settled until he saw Ben, Beverly, and Mike standing outside the doors of the gym and the proximity of three more of his closest friends made something in him go soft.

Beverly was wearing a dark green pantsuit that was so immaculately tailored Richie had no doubt she could have worn it in Milan, fuck the dingy hallways of Derry High. In the harsh yellow lighting of the corridor right above her head, making the ends of her hair glow like they were sparking with an inner fire, she looked more like an angel to Richie than any of the pictures he’d seen in the methodist churches his dad’s parents had forced him to go to every Christmas he’d been dragged up north to see them. She was fixing Mike’s tie as Mike cracked a joke about fashion not being his forte, despite the fact he was wearing a good cream-coloured suit that made everyone around him fade into the background like wallpaper. Ben was laughing at what Mike had said and was the first to notice the others coming, raising a hand in greeting as they approached.

The six of them together, along with Sue and Patty, they remained in a deadlock outside the gym doors. The music from inside was gently reverberating through the doors and Richie thought he could pick up on the 80’s Greatest Hits styled soundtrack, despite the fact they’d all graduated in ‘94. There was a sense of a breath being held; none of them quite ready to exhale and plunge in. 

“Is Eddie here?” Richie said, wanderingly, just in case they were waiting for him.

“He’s already inside,” Mike said. “I just saw him and Clara in there.”

Fuck. Richie noticed Stan rolling his eyes and watching Mike and Stan exchange a quick look that immediately spoke volumes. Patty tugged on Stan’s sleeve and he shot her a quick smile, but there was a heaviness in the way he looked back at Richie. It said _ you don’t know everything _.

“I guess we better go in,” Bill said.

Richie wasn’t convinced he wanted to. He heard the sounds inside, the music and the voices of people he had half-known as a child and knew even less as an adult now they’d been apart for decades. He was starting to wonder why the fuck he was even there. Who the fuck went to their high shcool reunion? That was the kind of thing people who had never gotten over their failed football careers did. Richie was, by anyone’s metric, pretty successful. And yet there he was. 

“You’re the leader, Big Bill,” Richie said. “Although not really that big. How did you end up being such a shortass?”

“Trust you to go for the low road,” Bill said.

“He’s gotta go for the low road, you can’t reach the high one,” Mike said.

The others laughed and Bill made a resigned face, giving Sue a look that expressed how poor and long-suffering he was. She laughed too, mercilessly.

Beverly linked an arm with Richie and smiled up at him. The slight warmth of her arm in his was comforting. He reached out and linked arms with Stan, who looked a little good-naturedly beleaguered but didn’t pull back despite his general dislike of human contact. 

“Changed my mind, we’re gonna go have a threesome,” Richie said. 

“Let’s go into the stupid party,” Stan said.

“And have a threesome right there? Bold, Uris, but I’m game if Beverly is.”

Bev punched him in the shoulder. It did not hurt but Richie melodramatically flinched away from her as if she’d broken his shoulder. She linked her free arm with Ben after that, instead of punching him again.

“Come on,” she said. “I feel better now you’re here.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Richie said. “You look so fucking insanely hot, by the way. I can’t believe I’m allowed to be anywhere near you.”

“Thanks, Rich. You look good.”

“I look like a clown. Let’s go in there.”

Stan linked arms with Bill who grabbed Mike, completing the thread. Sue and Patty watched with some small amusement, a look that suggested they were familiar with their partners’ weird relationship with their friends, and did not hold it against them, although did not necessarily understand it. Richie felt that no one would ever truly understand to be one of the Losers if they weren’t one of the Losers. He was sure Sue and Patty had good relationships with Bill and Stan respectively, but he also knew that, reasonably and logically, no one knew what it was like to be in your group of childhood friends. Less reasonably and less logically, he also believed fiercely that his friends had something that was not imitable. There was no group like the Losers in existence.

They went in, weaving through the doors like a snake, laughing about the absurd clumsiness of their group entrance. Inside the gym, the bleachers had been folded away, leaving the whole of the room open for the people milling around. It was not that grand or impressive; Richie had been going to Hollywood award shows for over a decade, was never going to be blown away by a small town high school reunion. It was just as tacky and small as he’d been expecting, the PTA budget only stretching far enough to set up a buffet and a DJ, the rest of the decorations looking like they’d been reused from the senior prom. A very slow, gentle disco ball was sending shards of coloured light across the room, pulsing purple, red and yellow. The DJ was playing Tears for Fears, because of course he was.

Eddie was standing right in front of them, as if he’d been waiting for Richie to walk through those doors. The pink light drifting over his face made his eyes huge and shining, the glimmer so bright against the dusk of the rest of the room.

“Hey,” Eddie said, over the music. “I got you a drink.”

Richie unlinked from everyone and cleared the empty space between them in a few steps, taking the beer from Eddie’s hands. Their fingers touched briefly, Eddie’s fine boned fingers against Richie’s broader hands. 

“_ Something happens and I'm head over heels, I never find out till I'm head over heels _,” the song wailed over their heads. 

“Sorry about last night,” Richie said.

“Forget it,” Eddie said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You have to stop forgiving me for everything,” Richie said. 

“Ok, I hate you forever. You fucking happy now, asshole?” Eddie said. “Look, I just trust you mean it. If you don’t, then why would you be apologising?”

Richie didn’t have an answer for that. 

Then Clara appeared, as if snapped into place like she was on a rubber teather. She came to stand a little behind Eddie’s elbow, like a teacher watching to make sure you weren’t cheating on an exam. Richie thought that maybe he shouldn’t try to talk to her, but the temptation was overwhelming. It was like a scab you couldn’t help but pick at, even when it bled. 

“Hi, Clara,” he said.

“Mr Tozier,” she said. 

“You know of me, I see,” he said. 

“Well, Eddie always kept up with your show,” she said. There was nothing friendly in her voice. It wasn’t aggressive or even truly passive-aggressive, it was just _ closed for business _. We aren’t accepting applications at this time, thank you. You were rejected on the ‘friend’ front and you aren’t having another chance.

Richie looked at Eddie, who was looking back at him. Richie took a long drink. Eddie’s eyes were serious, filled with something that made the hairs stand up on the back of Richie’s neck. There was really nothing more that he wanted to do more than talk to Eddie; to be _ alone _with Eddie. He had nothing against his friends, but he so badly wanted it to be the two of them, the way it used to be.

“That’s nice of him. Too bad I couldn’t keep up with his career,” Richie said. “But they don’t broadcast the accountancy award shows.”

“He’s not an accountant. He’s an actuary,” Clara said. “It’s so hard to imagine the two of you as childhood friends. You’re so different.”

“Opposites attract. You two are a delightful match, though. I can tell right away why Eds likes you.”

“He doesn’t like ‘Eds’.”

“He likes me.”

Clara gave Richie a tight smile and told Eddie, quietly, that she was going to go get a drink. Eddie was still silent.

“Nothing to add?” Richie said.

“What the fuck is there to say?” Eddie said, without any apparent anger, before he stepped out from under Richie’s gaze to go and bother the others. 

Terrified of having to spend a moment alone with his thoughts, Richie span on his heel and grabbed onto Beverly by the shoulders like an octopus seizing its prey. She shouted with laughter, that same high, raucous laughter she’d had her entire life. 

“Madam Beaver,” Richie said, in a painful British accent.

“Sir Dick,” she said.

“You simply must allow me the honour of the first dance.”

“Oh, my God. I haven’t even said hi to anyone yet,” Beverly said.

“Who gives a fuck?”

“Hm. A compelling argument, Sir Dick.”

He took Beverly by the hand and spun her out onto the dancefloor as a song by New Order started to play. He winked over his shoulder at Ben, who gave him a nod and a smile, completely unbothered by having his fiancée whisked away from him. Richie kept one hand in hers and the other holding the beer balanced lightly by her waist, careful not to spill it all over both of them. She put her free hand on his shoulder, steadying them both.

Eddie and Ben were watching them, talking between themselves as Richie twirled Beverly over the floor like they were ballroom dancing. Some of the people around them -- some of whom were instantly, violently recognisable and others who were only distantly familiar -- startled out of their path as Richie took over the dance floor, barrelling through the people who were only standing and talking. He didn’t care one bit that he was instantly making them both the centre of attention. Through the noise of the music, he heard some ripples of his name and thought about how he was likely to get noticed anyway, a little. He didn’t think of himself as particularly famous, but people pay attention when their former classmates end up on TV.

“Do you remember that Halloween party we went to?” Beverly said. “Where we made up the dance?”

“Yes, holy shit,” Richie said. “How did that go?”

“Oh my god, I don’t remember. I doubt I could move my hips like that these days.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

They tried anyway, sashaying and twirling around completely out of time with the music and both of them laughing too hard to keep themselves upright after too long, veering around the floor wildly. Sometimes Richie would see the others out of the corner of his eye as he moved; they were not dispersing across the room much but were sticking solidly to their own pack. Ben was still watching Beverly. Eddie was still watching him.

“I kissed Eddie for the first time at that party,” Richie said.

“_ First _ time?” Beverly said.

“I kissed him a lot afterwards.”

“No, I meant I’m surprised it took that long.”

“Well, it took you and Ben like thirty years.”

Beverly laughed, but there was something sad in her face that he recognised intimately. He didn’t want to invite her down that path, just lifted their joined hands in the air and invited her to do a twirl, the back of her blazer flaring out around her. After the song ended, suddenly Ben was there, as tall as Richie and much stronger and leaner, his chiselled face frighteningly recognisable as the boy he’d known years ago despite how much he’d changed.

“Can I cut in?” He said.

“Didn’t realise you got jealous so easily, Haystack,” Richie said gently.

“We didn’t go to our real prom. I want to try and make up for that,” Ben said.

“Believe me,” Beverly said. “I am _ not _sorry I missed prom.”

She took Ben’s hand anyway and Richie retreated to the sidelines. Most of the others had migrated around a little, but there was a definite image of them all standing in a protective chain, each of them linked together and making sure the others didn’t fall behind. The seven of them against the world. Richie joined the Club as Mike was explaining to a familiar looking woman that no, he hadn’t gone to this school, but he was the joint plus one of the other six. Richie slipped a hand around Mike’s waist and held him possessively close.

“We’re in a seven person polycule,” Richie said, in a nasal LA drawl. “If we don’t have him around the entire thing will collapse and we’ll split off into two throuples, and then it’ll take all night to put us back tog- Wait, Ruth?”

The woman, shortish and with brassy blond hair and a large tattoo on her arm, morphed almost in front of his eyes back to the girl he had dated for one ridiculous month, twenty years ago. She gave him a lazy half-smile.

“Hey, it’s my famous ex,” she said. “That’s what I always tell my husband when we see you on TV. Drives him nuts.”

“Christ. That was a long time ago,” Richie said. “How are you?”

“Good. Not a comedian. Made deputy last year.”

“_ Sheriff? _Jeez, I used to think you were cool.”

Ruth blinked at him in confusion. That clearly went over her head. Small town cops never changed, clearly. Childhood ex or not, Richie felt an overwhelming urge to not be around her at that exact moment. Actually, maybe her being his ex made that more understandable. Richie decided to dip out of this one and made a beeline for the buffet table instead, passing by the chain of Losers like he was following a boundary of safety. He had spotted a couple of people pointing him out and it made his skin burn under the collar of his shirt. He averted his eyes and tried to focus on the floor in front of him instead of getting upset about what people were saying almost right in front of him.

_ Nothing good _.

He came up against Eddie almost by accident, standing by the buffet table. Clara was holding out a plate of some kind of green salad that looked deeply unappetizing under the yellow lights. Richie came up behind Eddie like a sudden memory, grabbing something off the table and making Eddie spin around to see who was snatching food up like a starving orphan.

“You don’t eat buffet food,” Richie said.

“No, of course not. You have any idea how many people have manhandled that sandwich you’re shoving in your face? No, you don’t. And there’s no list of ingredients. What if that has shellfish in it? Hope you brought an epipen, because I didn’t.”

“I’m amazed you didn’t,” Richie said, finishing cramming a chicken sandwich into his face. “What happened to always being prepared for every possible disaster? Where’s your walking pharmacy?”

“We both know all that shit was fake. It was my mother getting into my head. I'm _ not _ sick,” Eddie said.

Clara leaned around Eddie, the look on her face so defensive that it was like Richie had suggested Eddie started huffing gasoline.

“It was a long effort getting Eddie off all the medication his mother hooked him on, he’s come a long way,” Clara said. 

The protectiveness in her voice cowed Richie. He found himself giving a tight, awkward smile. She’d helped Eddie with something that had been tangibly hurting him; that was more than Richie could ever claim to have done. He felt both grateful that someone would look out for Eddie and guilty that it hadn’t been him who had been there, then even _ more _ guilty that he was at all concerned about the fact _ he _wasn’t getting credit for Eddie improving his life instead of just being unconditionally happy for his one-time best friend.

“That’s really good, man,” Richie said, sincerely. Eddie gave a half-smile.

“Most medicine is just chemical poison, anyway. We only take natural supplements. Do you know how many toxins a daily charcoal pill can cleanse from your body?” Clara said.

Richie stared at her in aghast silence, his eyes bugging huge in his skull. Eddie had gone violently red around the ears, like he knew how embarrassing this was however much he wanted to repress it. The voice of Richie’s mother was telling him to be polite in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t help but talk.

“I use my liver and kidneys for that,” Richie said. “Charcoal will like fuck up any medications you’re on. It absorbs it all.”

“Like I said. Medications are poison,” Clara said. “We have no idea what we’re putting into our bodies, and we just trust these big pharmaceutical companies to have our best interests at heart.”

Stan, who was pouring himself a drink, looked sidelong at Richie with an expression that said he wanted to make problems on purpose.

“Ask what she thinks about vaccines,” he said, dryly.

“Let’s not,” Eddie said.

“Why not? I don’t have a problem with sharing my opinions with people,” Clara said. “It’s important to let people be informed.”

“It just always starts arguments, and we’re at a party…” Eddie said.

“No, go on,” Stan said. 

“Why, do you think they ‘cause autism’ or something?” Richie said, scoffing. 

“I said we shouldn’t have this conversation,” Eddie said.

There was exactly one half second before the realisation hit Richie and he whipped his head around to look at Clara with his mouth hanging open in horror and Eddie’s head drooped on his shoulders like someone had cut his strings. 

“You can’t tell me what I get to talk about, I know that you think it’s embarrassing that I care about children’s well-being...” Clara said.

“Oh, is that what you care about? Fascinating,” Stan said, before Patty suddenly emerged and pulled him away like she was physically restraining a garden hose that was loose and whipping around the room. 

Richie was about to absolutely go nuts when someone behind him coughed and snatched his attention away. Feeling like he was being ping-ponged around from point to point like he was in a pinball machine he turned around to see a guy in an expensive shirt that didn’t fit him that well and limp brown hair in a style that was ten years out of date.

“Richie Tozier?” The guy said. “It’s me, Josh Doyle? Do you remember…”

Richie’s most clear last memories of Josh were of a shouting match about Clinton (Bill, not Hilary) in the school canteen and getting detention. Josh clearly didn’t hold a grudge; he was giving Richie a car salesman smile and a weak handshake.

“Yeah, how you doing, man?” Richie said. 

“Good, man,” he talked nervously, emulating Richie’s speech out of a clear anxiety to fit in. “You made it big, huh? We always knew you were going places.”

“Glad you had my back,” Richie smiled with too many teeth and not enough humour.

Eddie was bickering with Clara in the background but out of the corner of his eye Richie could see him glancing over at Josh Doyle and losing interest in the argument as Clara gave a very reasonable-sounding assertion of her right to have an opinion, however much Eddie disliked it.

“I’m in local politics now, myself,” Josh continued. Eddie made a face that very clearly said _ this man is not as important as he wants you to think _.

“You were always very politically involved,” Richie said, trying very hard not to look at Eddie’s face.

“You ever grow out of your little liberal phase?” Josh said with a laugh like he was nervous about what he was going to hear. Eddie made a gesture like he was going to blow his own brains out. 

“Not in a way you’d like,” Richie said. He had a DSA card in his wallet, but he wasn’t going to start waving it around in here. 

“Yeah I guess those west coast types probably love that,” Josh said. “My, uh, my eldest has just moved out to LA, actually. She wants to be a director. You know, I was wondering…”

Oh, there you go. The real reason. Eddie audibly scoffed and Clara asked him what was so funny, not aware his attention was divided. 

“She wants some help? Sure, man, drop me a line sometime.” Richie slapped Josh on the shoulder and then quickly ducked out of the conversation before Josh could actually get around to asking for a number. 

Richie dived to the sidelines where he found Bill, Mike and Sue talking about football with someone whose name he couldn’t remember and looked at him equally blankly. This was relieving for about a second and a half before the guy’s wife did recognise him and asked for a photo, to which Richie reluctantly obliged her. Mike, Bill and Sue cracked up about this pretty bad.

“Look, if one person starts asking for a photo, like everyone else does. It doesn’t matter if they have no idea who I am they’re just like hey, a famous guy! I can put this on Facebook and maybe my kids will speak to me!” Richie said.

“Oh, man, tell us how hard it is being a bigshot celebrity,” Mike said.

“Yeah, none of you guys ever think about the struggles I face as a mediocre and middlingly successful comedian. What, you think you have it hard because you ‘teach high school’ and ‘run an independent business’? Get real.”

The three of them jeered at him for that, which Richie took with good humour. They spent a little while circulating the room, talking to other people. They ran into Reginald ‘Belch’ Huggins, who was now a supermarket manager and didn’t like having his childhood nickname, habits, or friends dragged up again and especially not in front of his small and completely oblivious out-of-town wife. Richie made sure she was well-informed on the kind of kid that Reggie had been before an obviously embarrassed Bill swept him away.

“I have to live with these people,” Bill said.

“Why the fuck would you want to?” Richie said.

“There’s stuff worth living here for,” Bill said, with a shrug. 

All in all, Richie was finding the party mildly tedious, which was comforting. It was fitting nicely into his desire for this all to mean nothing. There was the smell of rubber and sweat and industrial cleaner, the coldness of the strobe lighting and the unpleasant warmth that came from having a hundred adults crammed into a small space. There was no mysticism to the air, no sense of romance. No one on Earth could possess rose-tinted glasses strong enough to look at this place and think it was beautiful and nostalgic. It was just a hundred and fifty odd people who for some reason had felt enough of a draw to return to the place where they had, through no choice of their own, grown up. Standing there, even as he talked to Mike, Sue, and Bill and made them all laugh, telling the long and ridiculous story about Beverly trying to teach him to yo-yo that made her hide her face in embarrassment, he couldn’t think about anything but how much he wanted to get out of there. 

Why were any of them here? Bill had made peace with this place enough to teach, to go from being a boy who was stuck in the whims of fate to someone who had some tangible control over the people around here to try and improve it. Mike had managed to elevate himself above Derry. Ben, Stan and Beverly had managed to flee long ago; their attachment was to the other Losers, not to the town, as evidenced by the frequent holidays at _ their _homes that had been mentioned. In a way, the only ones still under control by it were Richie and Eddie. Eddie, who had never changed anything in his life, and Richie, who was unable to. 

Speaking of Eddie. He had been unwittingly quarantined; he occasionally circled closer to the group, but there was a dour note to their interactions, a feeling that he was restraining himself. Frequently he would get wrapped up in another argument with Clara, the tension between them so visible it was louder than the music around them.

“Marital bliss,” Richie said, watching the two of them bicker.

“It’s not nice to talk about our friend’s wife behind their backs,” Bill said.

“She’s a bitch,” Sue said. “No wonder Eddie had a breakdown.”

“Sue.”

“_ What? _ He got prescribed antidepressants and she made him stop taking them. That’s not _ right _.”

Eddie was depressed. That information sat heavy in Richie’s chest, mixing badly with the beer he’d been having. He watched Eddie, small in his blue suit and and looking horribly powerless in the middle of the hall and was overcome with an urge to take him away. Richie surged across the gym towards them.

“It’s ironic that you would call me argumentative when every day of your life you’re losing your mind over some new problem,” Clara was in the middle of saying, going full speed ahead. “You have some of the worst anger issues of anyone I’ve ever met, and you refuse to do anything about them--”

“Hey,” Richie said, interrupting.

Clara looked exhausted by his presence already. Eddie was wincing.

“Dance with me,” Richie said.

“What?” Eddie said.

“C’mon, like the old days. Like that shitty Halloween party.”

Eddie looked moderately embarrassed, smiling in that _ I-am-so-sick-of-your-nonsense _ way, but he didn’t stop Richie from taking his hand and tugging him onto the dancefloor.

“This is so stupid,” he said, but he was letting it happen. 

Richie pulled him into the traditional waltz pose, a hand on his hip and the other held high, leading him as they did a ‘I’ve seen this on TV before’ imitation of the dance, neither of them having any particular grace or rhythm. The song was wildly unsuitable to waltz to but, as any good comedian could tell you, that was what made it so funny to try. And it was the thin veil of humour that kept Richie safe; when it was a joke, he didn’t have to worry about anyone getting the wrong idea.

Or at least, that was how it had worked when he was a teenager. Not so much anymore, when he’d held hands with Eddie dozens of times and put his hands on Eddie’s hips for very different kinds of dancing. He remembered, distantly, convincing himself that it was the _ saying _ ‘I love you’ that would turn their relationship into something where every action he took had a meaning behind it the other was desperate to interpret, but now he thought the opposite. In a relationship where neither of them ever said what they meant, all they could ever do was take wild guesses at what actions were intended to say.

It was funny and sad how much he’d fucked up his teenage years, but there was no fixing it now. It was also a little funny how fast he had reverted to his old self. Though it was more like he had never changed at all; he had always just been Richie, as much as he’d wanted to pretend otherwise, and it was hiding from that that had made him miserable. He knew that. He had always known that, even if he had wanted to pretend otherwise.

Despite being completely off-beat and out of time with the song, they moved completely in-step with each other as they danced and Richie wondered, with the kind of dread you only ever had when you had realised something had to be true after hoping it wasn’t, that the reason he was so unhappy was because he did not have Eddie. Thirty-eight and he had never gotten over his high school boyfriend… It was enough to make you laugh, or cry.

“This song was on that mixtape you made me,” Eddie said. 

The song was Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order. Richie hadn’t really noticed but once he did he was hit immediately by a sense memory of his old beat-up car, the old popcorn smell of the interior, the weak blow of hot air from the heaters, cassette tapes rattling around in the glove compartment, all while Eddie sat by his side, instantly becoming the focus of his world. Back then if you’d sat Eddie in front of a parade and a live Duran Duran performance the only thing Richie would be able to recall later on was how Eddie was there. Fuck, that was probably still true. There he was, at a party with six of his old friends, and he was still only thinking about Eddie.

“You remember that thing?” Richie said.

“I listened to it so many times the tape snapped,” Eddie said.

“You’re kidding me.”

“It meant a lot to me. You made it.”

“You must have gone crazy with boredom, there were only eight songs on that thing.”

“I know them all off by heart.”

Eddie was laughing as Richie spun him around, and it was so beautiful it hurt. Fuck, Richie was in so much trouble. He was in so much fucking trouble. He felt an almost instant surge of panic telling him to run away, but he also couldn’t bring himself to do that again, to wrest himself out of Eddie’s hands and run across the room like a scared child. He reminded himself that he didn’t need to; there was a career waiting for him back home, a life, a halfway decent reputation as a comedian and presenter that was not going to be destroyed because he held hands with his crush on the other side of the country.

Richie tried to make himself believe he was safe. 

He pulled Eddie in close again, too close. Chest-to-chest, conspicuously close, people are staring close, people will _ notice _ close. His heart was pounding in his throat when he did, adrenaline making his body tremble. He had a hand on the small of Eddie’s back, the other tightly clasped with Eddie’s. Eddie, with his perfect triangle torso and his long-fingered, delicate hands; with his old-Hollywood handsome startlingly expressionistic face, eyes that saw everything and freckles that were still visible when you got close enough. Eddie Kaspbrak, thirty-eight years old and unhappy despite seemingly everything in his life having gone just the way it was supposed to.

Richie felt like he was on fire. When the song ended, their hands slipped off each other. He looked over at Clara standing by the buffet table. She was looking back at him, jaw set square and tense. They locked eyes. He wished he felt smug or triumphant, but there was a hollowness in the way she stared at the two of them that made him realise very suddenly that while he didn’t think he could ever like her -- her views were abhorrent -- he didn’t know her at all, but he was fairly certain she knew him. Didn’t know him as his friends did, didn’t love and care for him, hadn’t grown with him, but knew him from the mark he had left on Eddie. Just as all of Richie’s boyfriends had lived in the shadow of Eddie Kaspbrak, she had lived her life in the shadow of Richie Tozier. She probably knew, too, what he was. 

“Can we get some air?” Richie said.

“Sure,” Eddie said.

They headed out of the gymnasium, weaving their way out through the crowd. They took a hard turn when they got to the corridor and headed out through the fire doors into the schoolyard. That had been renovated more than any of the rest of the school; the concrete and asphalt had been redone, and there was a pretty miserable attempt at having some greenery. The tree there seemed to have lost all of its leaves despite it being the middle of summer.

They wandered aimlessly over to the low wall surrounding the tree and parked themselves on it, the brick cold against Richie’s ass. He lit a cigarette and Eddie hunched his shoulders against the surprisingly cool night air.

“You and the wife are getting on really well,” Richie said.

“Yeah, I don’t know why I thought going out tonight would help,” Eddie said. “We just argue all the time now. Every time I hope we’re going to get on better but we haven’t really in a long time.”

Blue-grey cigarette smoke curled in the air as Richie exhaled. He looked at Eddie, tried to examine him for any evidence of a happier future. He knew _ now _that neither of them had been particularly happy children, the happiness they’d found in naivety fading away as they’d grown to understand that their lives were fucked up for reasons outside of their control, but Richie had been hoping that over the years Eddie would have become happier. He’d assumed without him, Eddie would have found better opportunities.

“Look, I know it was twenty years ago, but I wanted to say sorry,” Eddie said, finally. 

“_ Apologise? _” Richie said, genuinely baffled. “What for?”

“For… For being a bad friend. You were hurting so much as a kid, and all I did was make it about me and then make things worse. I helped drive you away,” Eddie said.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Eds? You were a kid, what were you going to do? Cure all the townsfolk of homophobia with a magic spell? I was gonna apologise to _ you _because I abandoned you here.”

“You didn’t _ abandon _ me, I was never really gonna go. You didn’t have a choice.”

They stared at each other. They could hear the music from the gym pulsing through the walls of the school and the sound of it was matching the racing of Richie’s heard in his throat.

"No, you didn't get to make a choice," he said. "Even if you weren't gonna go, I should have asked you. It was fucked up for me to decide for you. I ruined your life."

"You didn't _ ruin my life _you fucking narcissist," Eddie said. "I have a good life. I have a house, I have a good job, I'm married. That's what everyone wants."

"So you're happy then?"

"Sure. Aren't you?" There was something searching in the question, as though Eddie wanted more than a yes or a no. Like he needed the answer to be a lifeline.

"Just as happy as you are," Richie said.

"That's not fair.”

Richie couldn’t tell if Eddie was moved by that or if he was angry, his face pale and mouth a hard line, that almost comical look of upset he got when he was pissed off. All Richie could think was:

_ Jesus Christ I’ve been in love with him my entire life _. 

“How’s it not fair?” Richie said.

“What if you’re unhappy and I’m happy?” Eddie said.

Richie shrugged. “Then it’s not your problem.”

He flicked away his cigarette and headed for the doors back inside. He had his hand on the door when Eddie grabbed him by the sleeve.

“Let’s not go back in,” Eddie said.

“What about everyone else?” Richie said.

“I’m feeling selfish,” Eddie said.

Richie found himself smiling. 

“Then let’s bounce,” he said.

He didn’t want to go back in. The party made him feel sticky and uncomfortable, and he was tired. He didn’t like the way people looked at him and he hated the small talk, the uncomfortable sensation that everyone was thinking things about him they wouldn’t say to his face.

They looped around the school instead of going through the building again, as if they were kids sneaking out, trying to keep out of the prying eyes of the others. They were walking at first, then jogging, then running around the back of the school. There was no communication about it, only an instinctive need to keep up with the other, hurtling down the side of the school building and out into the front, both of them running in an ungainly, inelegant sprint to the sidewalk. It wasn’t until they reached the road that they stopped, both of them laughing hysterically for no real reason other than the absurdity of the moment and the feeling that they were somehow doing something _ daring _ by sneaking off alone getting to them.

There was a cop car parked on the sidewalk. At first neither of them really paid attention to it, but then the lights flashed and Eddie’s face dropped like a stone, all the joy of the moment vanishing in an instant. Richie looked over and saw Henry Bowers leaning out of the car window with a sickly smile on his face. He suddenly felt very cold. 

“Drunk and disorderly?” Henry Bowers said. 

“We’re not doing anything,” Richie said. It sounded absurdly childish, like a kid caught by a teacher.

“You gotta keep your eye on that one,” Henry said, pointing to Eddie. “If it was on me, you’d be fucking locked up, Kaspbrak. Psychos like you shouldn’t walking around without someone fucking watching you.”

“Good thing you’re a traffic cop, not judge, jury and executioner,” Eddie said.

“You talkin’ back to me?” Henry said. “You better watch your fucking mouth.”

Eddie was trembling with barely restrained anger, but even he wasn’t enough of a hothead to make a move against a cop. He just stood and glared back, eyes hot and hard as burning coals. There was something entrancing about Eddie when he was fucking _ mad, _Richie thought. It was like seeing a fire get a little too big for the grate; all of a sudden what you thought was warm and safe was able to remind you it had a wild, uncontrolled side. Richie was struck with how romantic the idea of being burned was, his chest tight with the shocking force of his own desire.

“We’re minding our own business. You could learn a couple of things about that,” Richie said, reflexively pulling all the blame onto him. 

Henry’s eyes, small and mean as shrivelled raisins, narrowed.

“You think you’re above the law just because you’re rich, Tozier?” He spat.

“I haven’t broken any law. I know this town is stuck in the past but I’m pretty sure that even Maine got rid of anti-sodomy lawss,” Richie said. Eddie turned his head to hide the fact he was laughing.

Henry, tired of this already, started climbing out of the car. Richie and Eddie both took an immediate step back, Richie finding himself standing slightly in front of Eddie without even considering it.

“People like the two of you don’t fucking belong here,” Henry was saying as he stepped out. “You don’t deserve to be in a nice town like this. A psycho and a fuckin’ faggot.”

Richie was about to say something, but he didn’t get the chance. Henry’s attention got diverted to behind them, his face rearranging itself into something that was almost approaching a smile. If you hadn’t been within earshot, you would assume that the three of them were just having a peaceful chat. Richie looked over his shoulder and saw that Ruth was approaching them, her husband tailing behind.

“Hi, Richie,” she said. “Hey, Hank, what’s going on?”

“Nothing much. Catching up with old school friends,” Henry said, nodding his head to Richie and Eddie as if they’d really just been catching up. Eddie’s face was so sour he looked sick. 

“It’s the right night for it,” Ruth said, a little absently, distracted by whatever her husband was doing as he shouted down the phone.

It felt very fitting to Richie that Ruth either had no idea or didn’t particularly care what Henry was up to. Completely blind to the fact a dangerous monster was lurking in front of her, too caught up in the humdrum of her personal life to see the responsibility she had towards her community. Eddie grabbed Richie by the wrist and tugged him away to the parking lot before Henry could say anything else to them. Richie tried to shoot back a final farewell remark over his shoulder, but no one was around to hear it. 

“Can we take your car?” Eddie said. “Clara drove me.”

“No, I don’t have it. I came with Bill,” Richie said.

Eddie groaned. “Fuck it, we can walk.”

“Walk where?” 

“I have an idea.”

There it was again, that same stupid, puppyish excitement that had gripped him when they’d been hurtling around the side of the building like children. Eddie was taking them on a _ secret mission _. Richie swept his bangs out of his face, pulling his hair back into a ponytail with the elastic he kept around his wrist, as if he meant business now.

“Night hike. Let’s do it,” he said. “We better not get killed by a fucking serial killer roaming the streets, though.”

“No chance. They’ll take one look at your face and get scared off,” Eddie said.

“It doesn’t matter if we do get chased by murderers anyway, with your little legs I’d outrun you easily.”

“Fat chance, Tozier, I’ve been in the Derry running club for twenty years.”

“Is that a commentary on my weight? Low blow, Eds.” Richie drummed a hand on his stomach, not particularly offended. Eddie watched him with a notable pink blush around his throat before looking away sharply.

“Let’s go, moron,” he said. Richie laughed and followed him.

Pretty quickly it was obvious that Eddie was taking them towards the edge of town. They walked mostly empty sidewalks, the majority of the populace of Derry safe in their beds by 7:30pm leaving the streets quiet. When they passed the occasional other visitor, no one took much interest in them. Richie found himself thinking about the times he’d snuck out of the house in his last year in Derry, biking through the streets under the cover of darkness to get to Eddie’s, back when he was permanently grounded by his parents for the party he’d thrown. Everything he’d done back then had been an excuse to spend time with Eddie; he’d thrown that entire party so they could get drunk and pass it off making out as just the alcohol influencing them. Richie still drank a lot and still was to do with wanting to kiss boys, but which was the ‘excuse’ had flipped. Ironic.

They passed the Kissing Bridge as they walked, dimly visible in the darkness, out of the range of the streetlights. 

“The fuck happened to the bridge?” He said.

“Someone crashed their car,” Eddie said, in a tone that was unnaturally placid. Richie looked at him, but he was stubbornly not looking at it in a way that spoke volumes.

They went away from the bridge, around the edge of town in a loop, stopping at the end of a sidestreet that abruptly turned from asphalt to dirt path as it tracked through the barrens. Not a planned footpath, but one that had been forged through frequent use, by people walking it day after day until their trail had been inscribed. Richie recognised it immediately.

“Are we going to the clubhouse?” He said. “It’s like, nighttime.”

“What are you, a pussy?” Eddie said.

Richie laughed and gave in immediately, following Eddie out of the car and down the winding dirt path that led into the trees and then stopped being a recognisable trail as it was lost in the undergrowth. They marched over the fallen branches and pine needles that coated the grass in a pillowy layer of debris, occasionally stumbling and twisting their feet on the unsteady ground. At one point Eddie slipped and had to reach out and grab Richie for balance and after that they walked clutching onto the sleeves of each other’s jackets, holding each other up. 

They talked as they walked, expounding on the time they’d spent apart. Eddie had gone to college, Richie found out. He had graduated and gotten a job in Boston, lived there for about three years, but then his mother had been sick and he’d had to move home and take care of her, so he’d gotten a different job in Bangor. But that was too far to commute so he’d gotten a different job in Derry, then never managed to move out again. His mother had clung on just long enough for him to meet Clara when he was twenty-eight and then died, sending him running into Clara’s arms for comfort in the wake of the tragedy. And then he’d been an adult man with a decent job and his own house. Leaving after that would have been ridiculous; they weren’t going to be able to afford a nicer house anywhere else, moving to a nicer or bigger city would mean downgrading their home and risking them both having to job hunt. It would have been a silly risk, when it was so safe at home. 

“Not a very interesting life,” Eddie said. “But my life.”

Richie listened and gripped onto Eddie so tightly he could feel his own fingernails through the material of the blazer. He thought about the Kissing Bridge having a hole in the side but the R + E still being there. He thought about medication. He thought about the rats.

Richie told Eddie about his life while they walked with the reluctance of someone sitting down for a dentist’s appointment. It was hard not to let the bitterness about things bleed through the edges; there was a loneliness and sense of misdirection that pervaded his life that he didn’t think he could hide that well. It just got mixed up with everything else he said, like the soil at the bottom of a river getting dredged up with the current. He could try to bury things deep, but the water kept dragging things along with it no matter what he tried. 

He talked and he watched Eddie with the eye of someone who knew Eddie Kaspbrak better than he knew his own reflection; he saw the tension around Eddie’s mouth, the lines in his brow, the way he clenched his jaw and shook his head with that quick little jerk when he couldn’t bring himself to speak from upset. Richie could only marvel at how little Eddie had truly changed. The fact there had been so much time between their last meeting felt like a joke. 

“Is it weird how everything feels the same as it always was?” Richie said.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” Eddie said. “But I feel the same way.”

“I guess we’re both just crazy.”

They found the clubhouse. Again, Richie was surprised by the amount of walking and hiking they used to do as kids. Their world had been so small but they had really tested the limits of their cage, finding every boundary and stretching out as far through the bars as they could. Derry wasn’t a big town but the seven of them had really sniffed out all the corners they possibly could to try and make a life they could protect. 

Eddie found the entrance pretty quickly, the old wood protesting loudly when he lifted it up. The two of them stumbled down the ladder in turn, down into the dark of the pit.

It was pitch black. Richie pulled out his phone and flicked on the flashlight, illuminating the place in twin white beams as Eddie did the same. The limited light gave the dirt-floored room a spooky air; Richie thought immediately of _ Ghost Hunters _, guys running around abandoned buildings with janky cameras, jumping at shadows. The clubhouse would fit right into an episode of that; it was caked with the grime that came from age and decay, twenty years undisturbed and filled with that particular kind of cold you got only from places that had been unoccupied for too long. Cobwebs hung huge from the ceiling and the dark shadows in the corners loomed vast and twitching, as if occupied.

“We’re here today in the infamous Losers Clubhouse,” Richie said, in a theatrical TV presenter voice. “This is supposedly the site of seven murder-suicides, after a gang of kids known as the Losers all turned on each other. Legend says they were driven insane by-”

“Trashmouth’s incessent fucking rambling?” Eddie interrupted. Richie cracked up.

He shoved his phone into the top pocket of his shirt with the flashlight shining out, so that it could light up the room hands-free while Eddie started rummaging around in some dark corner. Richie inspected the sacred place where the hammock had once stood, now just some rotting cloth that was indistinguishable from the dirt on the ground. What a place of childhood torment that had once been for him. 

Eddie stood up holding what looked like a spectacularly dusty shoebox; Richie was impressed that he was even able to put his hypochondriac hands on something so dirty. The shoebox was placed on a table that was somehow still standing in the corner of the clubhouse with a kind of reverence that immediately grabbed Richie’s attention. Whatever the box was, it was clearly special. He drew across the room closer to Eddie, curious about what it could be. The box was grey-black with dirt and gloom, but when Eddie lifted off the lid and a cloud of dust floated away, Richie recognised the dark blue cardboard with a jolt.

“No fucking way,” he said, coming to stop by Eddie’s shoulder and peering into the box.

“I wanted to keep it safe,” Eddie said.

Richie didn’t know what to say. He looked down inside the box at all the things teenage him had considered important enough to save. A shitty little switchblade dirty with rust, a handful of holiday pamphlets, a bottle of vodka, gay porn, a five dollar note he’d forgotten, and an old photograph.

“Fuck,” Richie said, eloquently. “You kept this?”

“It was the stuff that was most important to you in the world, and I was the only one who seemed to give a shit,” Eddie said. “Someone had to.”

There was a screaming urge in Richie’s chest in that moment to grab Eddie, to hurl himself across the room and take him by the shoulders and kiss him, kiss him a hundred times for every year they’d been apart and then a hundred more. Standing there, jaw open like a damn stupid guppy, all he could think was that this man had always known what had actually mattered, more than anyone else in the world ever had. He was stunned by the force of what he felt enough that he managed not to actually body Eddie there and then.

Eddie sat down on the edge of the desk. There weren’t really any other places to sit, but it made an unhappy noise at the weight of him. Richie contemplated what having the weight of toned, adult Eddie Kaspbrak on you would feel like and bit the inside of his cheek.

Impulsively, he took the bottle of vodka from the box. He contemplated picking up the photograph, which had decayed with age and lost the shimmering brilliance that it had in his memory, but touching it felt like too much. He felt as though Eddie’s eyes were on him, burning. Eddie. Married Eddie. Married Eddie, settled down with a wife just like he’d always known he would.

“How about we finally crack this open?” Richie said.

“You want to drink straight vodka from the bottle?” Eddie said.

“Yeah. Don’t you?” 

Eddie pulled a face but didn’t stop Richie from cracking the twist cap off and taking a drink, nor did he refuse when Richie passed the bottle over to him. But he did shudder violently after taking a swig, the liquid particularly unpleasantly raw. 

With a lack of anywhere else to sit, Richie sat on the floor, ignoring the displeased look on Eddie’s face. He leaned back against one of the wooden poles, a little relieved when it didn’t give way and take the roof off the place. Eddie passed the bottle back to him.

“How come you never did have those 2.5 kids?” Richie said.

“Huh?” Eddie said. “Clara never wanted them. So, that put an end to that.”

“Feels like the kind of thing you should discuss before you get married.”

“Well, there were a lot of things we should have discussed before we got married.”

“Like the fact she thinks vaccines are evil and wants to medicate you through witchcraft?”

Eddie’s face soured. “She’s not that bad. A lot of those drugs are really harmful, and my mom had me taking shit I really didn’t need to be on.”

“And not taking your meds.”

Eddie went pale. “Look… I know it sounds bad, but you should have seen me on those things. I wasn’t myself.”

“I just know the me on mine is the me who decided not to go through with the old pill cocktail,” Richie said. “And maybe the you on yours wouldn’t have crashed his car into the Kissing Bridge.”

“I never said I did that.” The lack of denial confirmed Richie’s suspicions. 

“You didn’t have to. I could tell. I know you better than anyone.”

“Oh, you know me that well, do you?” 

“I do.”

Eddie took the vodka bottle back from Richie and took a long drink. A trickle of alcohol ran down the side of his mouth and along his jaw. Richie swallowed and tried not to look.

“What the fuck did you mean ‘as happy as you are’?” Eddie said. 

“Just that if you’re happy, then you don’t have to worry about me,” Richie said. He took the bottle back from Eddie, taking a swig. He took several. 

“Then obviously you’re not happy. No one who’s happy is like, ‘hey, just in case your entire life is fucked up, mine is also fucked up’.”

Eddie’s eyes were burning with something that made Richie feel slightly breathless. He had always felt a little like he was unwillingly tugging Eddie along, but there was a bright passion in them then that made him feel like he’d been underestimating him.

“You drove your car off a bridge,” Richie said. “So I guess you’re not happy.”

“I didn’t_ drive it off a bridge _. It was an accident. I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours. I fell asleep at the wheel and hit the barrier,” Eddie said, defensively. “You just told me you nearly killed yourself.”

“I did nearly kill myself. But I didn’t.”

Eddie took the bottle back. He started drinking, but then began laughing. It bubbled out of him so suddenly it took Richie by surprise. He was laughing so hard he slipped right off the table he was sitting on and came to a violent stop on the floor, sloshing some of the vodka all over himself. Richie, who had been leaning on one of the long poles holding the roof up, slowly slid down it to come sit on the floor opposite Eddie, their legs entangled.

“How are we this fucked up?” Eddie said, his voice wheezy with laughter. “This is fucking insane.”

“We’re disasters,” Richie said, pleasantly. 

“You wanna play truth or dare?” Eddie said, suddenly.

“What? Why?”

“You know everything about me.”

He was a little drunk, Richie thought. 

“Alright. Alright. Truth or dare?” Richie said.

“Truth.”

“When did you lose your virginity? Assuming you did.”

Eddie flipped him off. “I was twenty-one, I was in college. Her name was Melissa, we had been dating for three weeks. It went terribly. I had an anxiety attack afterwards and she broke up with me literally before I put my clothes on.” He took a drink before handing the bottle back to Richie. “Your turn.”

“Dare.”

“I dare you to… Eat a cobweb.”

“Spaghetti, that is fucking disgusting.”

“Chicken.”

Richie groaned with exaggerated disgust, took a swig of vodka and stood up. Eddie’s phone rang and he glanced at it briefly before grunting and turning it off, shoving it into his inside jacket pocket. Richie found a cobweb that didn’t look like it had anything caught in it and pulled a few strands off the ceiling.

“Oh my God,” Eddie said. “Don’t actually do it.”

“Dare’s a dare,” Richie said.

Eddie gagged with horror and watched between his fingers as Richie actually put the strands of web in his mouth and made an elaborate show of swallowing and sticking out his tongue as Eddie shrieked in childish horror, clutching at his face.

“That’s fucking disgusting! You’re an animal! Oh my _ God _.”

“Truth! Or! Dare!” Richie chanted, sitting heavily on the floor and taking another drink. Eddie slouched against the table, throwing his feet into Richie’s lap.

“Fuck. Truth.”

“You can’t pick truth every time.”

“I’m fucking scared of what you’re going to make me do, you psyscopath. That was a spider’s home. He’s homeless now.”

“Fuck the spider. Uh… Who was your first kiss?”

“You were, idiot. You know that.”

“Best kiss you ever had?”

“Look, Rich, as cute as you were when we were seventeen, cuteness alone did not make you a good kisser. Truth or dare?”

“Truth.”

“Weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?”

“Other than your mom’s room? Uh… An empty swimming pool, one time, in someone’s backyard. I don’t even know whose yard it was. Not the guy I was fucking.”

Eddie barked with laughter. 

“Come on, my turn,” he said.

“You’re doing dare. I dare you… To go stick your hand in that like, ditch and pull out Bev’s yo-yo you threw in there like thirty years ago.”

“How the fuck do you ever remember that?” Eddie groaned and stood up, a little unsteady on his feet when he did. 

He ambled across the room to where there was a deep trench in the floor, covered by a wooden board. He closed his eyes and took a breath before he stuck his hand under the board and rooted around for a second, making a series of comically disgusted noises before he pulled out an ancient plastic yo-yo, too filthy for the colour to be identifiable. He held it triumphantly over his head and Richie cheered with appropriate triumph.

“When I was a kid I always hoped that you’d dare me to kiss you,” Eddie said. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Richie said. A slight frown crossed Eddie’s face, just for a second.

“Have you ever been in love?” Eddie said.

“Once,” Richie said.

“Who…”

“You only get one question at a time. Truth or dare.”

“Dare”.

“I dare you… I dare you to… Text Bill and tell him you’ve always loved him.”

Eddie came to sit opposite Richie again, slouching against the table leg, his knees up but one lolling to the side so Richie could get a good view of his entire body, drawn long and rumpled, a little more dishevelled and dirty than the neat, presentable man from the party. All messed up just for Richie. Richie thought about the photograph in the box, kept for twenty years. Eddie never forgot.

Eddie pulled out his phone. The second it turned on it dinged with a dozen messages, but he ignored them all, rapidly texting. After a moment he held the phone out to Richie.

“There, happy?” He said. “You have such pussy dares.”

The text _ Bill I’ve always loved you _ was there in the little green iPhone text message bubble, but there was a couple of day’s worth of texts above that.

EDDIE 8:45am

_ He was really drunk. I was shocked, I think. How was he at dinner? Did he seem ok? Because he didn’t seem ok. _

BILL 8:47am

_ No he didn’t seem like he was doing that great. He was joking around and laughing but honestly I felt like he was lonely. It didn’t sound like he has anyone. _

BILL 8:48am

_ You should have been there. He missed you _.

EDDIE 8:48am

_ I know, I wish I had been. I couldn’t get out of fucking bed, though. I know it sounds pathetic, but I was so convinced the world was ending I couldn’t even move. _

BILL 8:50am

_ It’s not pathetic, you just need h _

The phone was removed before Richie could read more. He looked at Eddie, who was watching him from under his eyelashes. Eddie took another drink.

“Truth or dare,” he said.

“Truth,” Richie said again.

“Are you happy?”

“No. I don’t know why. Like, I should be, right? I should be happy. I have everything I could want. But I’m fucking miserable. I’m so fucking lonely. I feel like a fraud every day of my life. But if I let people know the real me, they run screaming to the hills. I’m a fucking failure!” Richie laughed and snatched the bottle back to take another drink. “I’m an incurable fuck-up, Eds. You’re lucky you got away from me.”

Eddie stared at him. 

“Dare,” he said.

“I dare you to… Uh…”

“Dare me to kiss you.”

Richie’s voice died in his throat. Eddie leaned over, only a few inches away from him, looking him in the eye. His skin was pink from alcohol, lips parted, eyes shiny in the low light as they fixed onto him. 

Richie wanted to kiss him. A roaring voice in his chest screamed for him to kiss Eddie, to just lean over and grab him. They had missed out on so much, lost years that they _ should _have spent together. Part of Richie said that he was entitled to this. 

But then there was another part of him, that reminded him that the ghost of Eddie’s future with a wife, a future where the two of them were condemned to sneak around behind the backs of people who were Schrodinger’s support, was the actual present now. Eddie had something, someone to go home to, a way to exclude himself from the burden of actually having to live openly with Richie. That was a callous way of looking at it -- Richie knew well enough that men who fucked guys and kept wives were not generally that happy -- but Richie found it hard to be generous about the way he lived. He didn’t want to only live half-having Eddie. If it was all or nothing then at least he could lie to himself that he was moving on.

“I’m not going to help you cheat on your wife,” Richie said.

Eddie opened his mouth and then shut it again with an audible snap. 

“Fuck this,” he said, standing up. “No, forget it. It’s fine. It’s my fault.”

“What was your fault?”

“You told me a million times,” Eddie said, “that this relationship was going nowhere. That you were waiting for me to move on. It’s my fault. I kept hoping you’d love me back, but I don’t know why I thought you’d suddenly change your mind _ now _.”

“Wait, what? You thought _ I _ didn’t love _ you? _”

“It was my fault. You told me the deal and I never listened to you. I just wish you’d let me go sooner. No, that’s not fair. I knew. I knew, and I kept bothering you and following you around.”

“Eds, I didn’t know…”

“I’m sorry. I’m not being fair. I was never like, entitled to your love. But I could never understand if you felt the same or not… I’m sorry. I have to go.”

Eddie stood up, lurching towards the ladder out of the clubhouse. Richie tried to stand up, sloppily spilling the vodka all over himself and shouting with anger at his own clumsiness as Eddie started climbing the steps out.

“Eds, please don’t go,” Richie said. “Don’t leave me.”

“I can’t stay,” Eddie said. “I’m sorry.”

Richie reached out but Eddie was already vanishing through the exit and letting the door slam shut behind him, leaving Richie alone with the remains of his childhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Old Friend by Mitski, of course


	17. 2014: and it's harder to be yourself/than it is to be anybody else/I wish that I were someone closer to you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SHORT chapter this time because i miscalculated the pacing. hope that's alright with you guys

Richie could have run after Eddie, but he didn’t. He just crawled out of the clubhouse too late and saw that his old friend was already gone and by then the creeping shame of screwing up again ( _ and again and again and again _ ) and the strength of the alcohol were getting to him, so he stumbled out through the woods and made the miserable walk back to the hotel. It was a long walk in the dark, but Richie’s mind was blank, too blank to focus on what was going on around him, and it felt like no time at all before he was trudging up the stairs to his room, legs stiff and shoulders tired, slumping into bed without bothering to do more than kick of his shoes.

Predictably, he felt like shit when he woke up in the morning. His head was throbbing and his entire body was aching and bruised. He found he was paralysed for a long moment when he woke up, back screaming at him for reasons he didn’t particularly understand, and it was a while before he managed to lever himself out of bed, stumbling around the room scraping his things together. 

He had to go back to California. He didn’t really know how he felt about it. It was just an inevitability, like paying taxes or the fact you had to go to sleep eventually. He had to go back to work; he had a tour to think about and material to learn and meetings and auditions… Derry had been an interesting diversion but he had the rest of his life to get back to. As he had been telling himself all along, he existed outside this place, it wasn’t important, he didn’t need it, he could move on. 

Standing in the hotel room at the Derry Town House, Richie thought that maybe if he was going to make such a big deal about ‘moving on’ he should actually do something about it. Very quickly, Richie Tozier made up his mind. 

He didn't say goodbye to the others. He said. quite deliberately,  _ I'll see you soon _ , stopping by Bill's house to see everyone one last time before he was thrown back into his usual routine. Only it wouldn't be his usual routine, not this time. He had made up his mind and the desire to change burned inside him now with a passion that was intense enough that for once he really believed that he would do it. There had been many false starts at doing things differently before, but this time he was going to make it happen. The disappointment in Eddie's face sat in him like a bleeding wound, and he knew that leaving Derry wouldn't outrun it. You couldn't walk off a scar like this. It needed treatment. 

Take a breath, Richie.

"Come to California," Richie told Bill and Sue. "If you bring the kids we'll go to Disneyland, if you don't, we'll go to a different magic kingdom." 

That made them laugh, and he told Stan and Patty the same thing.

"Maybe you can spend the holidays with us this year?" Stan offered. 

"Yeah, I'd like that," Richie said. When he hugged Stan goodbye he said, "and thanks for not giving up on me."

"We'll always be Losers," was Stan's cheerful reply.

“You’re coming to the wedding,” Beverly said. “I need you there.”

“Just in case you want to bail at the last minute? Don’t worry, Marsh, I can be your getaway driver,” Richie said, hugging her so tightly that it hurt. She kissed his cheek sloppily and made him laugh. 

"Oh, one last thing," Richie said to the five of them before he got into his car. "I'm gay. Just so you all know."

"Thanks for telling us," Ben said.

"Like you didn't already know," Richie said.

Ben shrugged. “I’m just happy you trust us.”

He did. 

Eddie didn’t show up, but that wasn’t surprising. Richie didn’t know if Eddie was through with him for good or not, but he knew what he was going to do. He had the photograph in his pocket, burning a hole like a roll of hundred dollar bills he couldn’t wait to gamble away on a horse he wasn’t even sure was going to run this race. It was worth the shot, though. This was new Richie Tozier, who took risks. 

He hugged his friends and told them all  _ see you later _ , then he drove to Eddie’s house and pushed an envelope through the letterbox before he got back in his rental car for the last time and drove to Bangor airport. His mind was filled with the last time he had left home, though this was entirely the opposite direction and this time he was relaxed. He could still remember what it had been like driving away twenty years ago, how when he’d finally stopped his body had been so rigid with fear that he had had to break himself from the seat like chipping a statue out of marble, trying to find the human inside all that raw stone. Driving away then, he felt smoother, calmer. He thought about sea glass, worn smooth and polished by the turbulent ocean, and the thought was almost meditative. Getting on the plane back to California, he actually felt good.

He felt somewhat less good when he touched down and was thrown immediately into the noise and the smog and got into an argument about traffic as soon as he’d left the airport parking lot, but he wasn’t going to let it get him down. He kept thinking about a couple of things as he drove back to his apartment and prepared to make calls that he knew were going to have him popping a klonopin and taking a long, long sleep. He thought about sea glass, about how Beverly and Ben were going to get married, and he thought about Eddie standing with a drink for him as the pink and blue strobe lights drifted softly over his face. Richie thought about these things and something inside him was at peace in a way it hadn’t been for a long time. He couldn’t quite work out what it was, exactly, that had changed so violently and so tremendously, only that something  _ had _ .

Richie called his manager and said he wanted to quit  _ The Loudmouth Roadshow _ , he didn’t want to audition for that stupid fucking animated movie, and he was going to write his own stand-up material. His manager wasn’t particularly happy about it, but Richie felt triumphant. After that, he made an appointment with a therapist he’d seen once and wimped out of after she’d gently told him he was showing signs of some self-destructive tendencies and would he like to talk about that more? At the time he had wanted to flay his skin off more than he wanted to think for a second more about his mental health, but now he felt ready. Something had to be done. After that, he rounded up every bottle of alcohol in the apartment and poured them out for good measure, digging bottles out of the back of cupboards and from the top shelves, places he put them with the dangerous thought  _ maybe I’ll need it later _ .

Rat hits the other switch. Clever rat.

* * *

Richie’s manager told him that he didn’t have to come out publicly if he didn’t want to, on the grounds of “It’s not really their business,” but that not doing so would “Probably just raise more questions in the long-term if you suddenly start writing stand-up about dating guys. People are nosy as hell. They want a narrative they can understand.”

In the end, there didn’t feel like there was much of a point doing things by half-measures, so Richie came out. He wrote a statement himself, gave his manager the gratification of looking at it to make sure he didn't say anything heinous, then he posted a video about it on Twitter. After many years of dreading this happening more than anything the response was underwhelming, exhausting, tedious, and at the same time oddly comforting. There was a predictable surge of spite from people who thought the idea it would be important for him to tell anyone about this was either embarrassing or disgusting, along with the homophobic vitriol that had characterised his childhood, but there were also a lot of people who were being very nice. And while Richie’s usual reaction to sincerity was to joke his way out of it in a desperate attempt to avoid human connection, for once in his life he allowed himself to just accept it. He looked at the messages of support, the people who said they understood what he’d been through, the people saying he was brave and how hard it was to do this and that they wanted the best for him, and he thought:

_ Maybe they’re telling the truth _ .

And for a little while he saw the good in people and just believed in it without trying to run away. He sat in his apartment and stared at his laptop and the messages flooding in and thought  _ fuck, maybe I should have done this years ago _ . But instead of basking in his regrets he chose to look at the people telling him he was a hero for doing it at all and told himself that maybe they had a point. 

There were a lot of new interview offers, most of which he didn’t take. They were too concerned about the story of his life and the rebranding, the corporate, easy to sell to the public side and it made his skin itch. He didn’t particularly need or want their attention or approval; all of a sudden, he had friends who were more than willing to supply both for him. 

Bev and Ben facetimed him from a huge, sun-filled apartment, Beverly illuminated like the fire Ben used to write about, the two of them congratulating him and giving him just enough gentle bullying that he didn’t feel overwhelmed by the affection. Beverly roped him quickly into her wedding plans, somehow finding space in what must have been an organisational nightmare for her, tersely telling him  _ beep beep _ when he tried to protest that she didn’t need to do anything just for him.

Stan and Patty called, talking on speakerphone, the chirping voices of their nest of children frequently being picked up, all of them excited by the mystery of a  _ new uncle _ they didn’t know yet, thrilled by their innocently small worlds expanding a little. Richie gamely talked with a couple of them, cracking up at the child-like questions and wondering, the joy of talking to someone who is so much more innocent and small than you are.

Mike facetimed him, showed him around the bookstore, took him down a long and rambling conversation about history, politics, literature, and the completely logical drive that cats had to lie in the sun all day. They talked for a long time about things that were both unrelated and deeply related to their lives, rolling back around to Mike gently congratulating Richie in a way that felt natural rather than like it was a deliberate segue, and it made Richie feel as warm as the fat black cat that slept on the high shelf in Mike’s bookstore.

The interview that Richie did take was for a tiny gay indie publication that his manager said was never going to get him much attention, but Richie felt more motivated by the Twitter DM he got from the twenty-two year old journalist who wrote for them than he did by any of the shiny form addresses he got from BuzzFeed or Vox. It just felt honest.

He met them at a gay bar he’d never been to; it was the middle of the day and the bar wasn’t open at that time, the lights on full robbing the place of any kind of mystique and making it a plain, black-walled room that had a large stage and a faint smell of alcohol and cleaning fluid. There were a couple of drag queens on stage half in costume, talking casually, and Richie wandered over to talk to them before the interview started. They recognised him, possibly just because they knew he was going to be interviewed there, and were bright and welcoming. 

“I haven’t been to a drag show since I was a teenager,” he said. He told them the story of the holiday in Provincetown, the thrill of sneaking in with a boy he loved and being completely enraptured by a show but never getting to see the end. He realised about halfway through the story he’d never told it to anyone before, which he admitted as well, a fact that seemed to delight them. 

One of the queens had her hand over her heart throughout the end of the story, her eyes open wide with a shining sparkle of tears that made him feel suddenly bashful. 

"Please tell me you married him," she said.

"Ha, no. I haven't really seen him for years." 

"Promise you'll come to our show tonight. You deserve to see one ending."

"Is it a happy one? Do you charge extra for that?"

He winked provocatively and they laughed and the thing that stayed with him later was not the interview, which was well-meant but slightly inept and a fumbling, if endearingly earnest, but the request of the queens to go back. 

He did. They called him on stage during the show and pulled him into the act, a mixture of obscene banter and stand-up and song that he loved fiercely and unconditionally. Afterwards they took him backstage with them, a gaggle of three queens who'd been performing and a cabal of their friends and the bar staff, forming an intimidating posse of people who crowded the dressing rooms and talked and laughed deafeningly all night. 

Then he went back the next week, and that time they did his make-up for him after hours and he stared at the him who was not him, but was somehow  _ more  _ him, a heightened, exaggerated him, his huge round eyes glowing, his cheekbones razor sharp and jawline highlighted. It was Richie, it was not Richie, it was a caricature of Richie and completely him at the same time. He tilted his head back and forth to admire the highlighter and the lipstick and the blush, the liner around his eyes that made everything pop. He felt incredibly inside his body, more aware of his every action, the flexing of his face and muscle, as though he were attuned with who he was more directly. 

_ Look at me. Look, it's Richie. I'm Richie. I'm in control.  _

He found he liked it a lot.

* * *

Richie did all the things he was meant to do to be happy, and he was happier. He woke up feeling lighter every day, he woke up not in pain, he walked through the world and didn't feel an unbelievable, crushing sense of shame in his every thought and action. In the few months after Derry, he was extremely aware of the fact that he was getting better, and that getting better was obtainable in a way he had never really believed. 

But he woke up alone. 

And he went to bed alone.

And the LA sun was so hot it burned, the traffic was bad, the smog was filthy. The people were shallow and two-faced. He was lonely.

Richie was always lonely. He thought maybe that was something he would just have to grow to accept; life could be better, it could even be happy, but he would still be alone. Maybe he was cursed with that. Loneliness. It wasn't that he had nobody -- he had his friends -- but he was keenly aware of the fact that he didn't have someone by his side. Perhaps that was just how it was for him. He could get by, he could be loved, but he would not be  _ loved, _ but that was fine because he knew he had never really loved anyone either. It wasn't fair of him to try and ask for love and never give, probably. That had always been one of his mistakes with relationships, asking for love and approval but never being able to give it to anyone else. 

He got a phone call from Bill three months after Derry. It was coming up to October, and Richie was sure the leaves in Derry were turning and the world there was getting a little colder and a little darker. He missed it. He had never thought he would miss cold, but the monotone weather of LA made him miss being in a place that felt like a changing world instead of just a place so frozen and artificial that might as well have been another set.

Bill sounded afraid, on the phone. They'd spoken less than a week ago, but as soon as Richie answered the phone he heard the difference in voice, the sudden slight tremble. The stutter, which had more or less vanished in Bill's teenage years, was back now, like a red flag of his fear. 

"Have y-you heard from E-e-ed-eddie?" He said. 

"No," Richie admitted, with an immediate pang of guilt. He didn't have Eddie's number, but he did have Eddie's email and Facebook, and it would have been easy to reach out. He'd left his number with Eddie and put all the weight of replying onto him, almost washing his hands of responsibility. And like a dark mirror of what had happened twenty years ago, Eddie had not taken him up on that and he had made no effort to do anything further.

"Oh. Well, l-let us know if you do. He's g-g-gone muh-muh-missing."

"Missing?" 

"He was s-s-supposed to b-be at a meeting with h-his wife this m-m-m… Today. But he didn't show." A slight inhalation of breath, a hesitation. Anxiety hanging thick in the air like the warning of snow. "His c-car is gone."

Richie thought of the Kissing Bridge with the fencing covering the hole.

"I'm sorry, I haven't heard anything. I'll tell you if I do."

They tried to make smalltalk afterwards, but it felt insensitive and Richie didn't have the spirit. He got Eddie's phone number off Bill, wondering why he hadn't done so months ago, and then tried to call Eddie immediately. Eddie didn't answer. Richie felt in a spiritual way he probably deserved that.

Eddie not being there haunted him, more than Eddie not being around always haunted him like a man trying to learn how to walk in zero gravity and finding the strength it took to power through the world too demanding. Richie was supposed to be working but his ability to concentrate was sapped; one part of him was sitting in the office with his manager talking tour dates, the other part was sitting in his car as he drove past the Kaspbrak's house and looked up through Eddie's window, seeing teenage him for the last time. That moment played over and over behind Richie's eyes, the jerk of his heart as he watched Eddie become a faint figure in the distance drawn out like a long violin chord, drowning out the world around him. 

Eddie's face vanishing, the hole in the Kissing Bridge, Eddie letting the trap door slam shut behind him. The images looped in Richie's mind and he found himself wondering why he hadn't done more, back again in the world he'd been trying to flee, the one where he just spiralled constantly around the question of  _ why didn't you do it right the first time you fucking moron? _

Richie kept wondering and kept asking himself that for about six hours, right before his phone rang. The number was unknown but he answered because the fear he felt was so great that it overcame the potential annoyance of having to deal with a nosy journalist that may have gotten his number. He didn't know he was hopeful or in fear that he was about to hear some of the worst news of his life but the second he answered and he heard the familiar soft sound of Eddie's breath on the line all the fear rushed out of him like the ship he was on touching down and gravity was being restored.

"Hey, Rich," Eddie said.

"Hi, Eds," Richie said.

"Do you… I'm at LAX, do you think you could come pick me up?" 

"Yeah," Richie said. "I can do that."

"Do… Could I stay at yours? For a little while?" Eddie swallowed thickly. 

"Of course you can," Richie said. 

"I think I need… I need help.”

“Hey. I’m coming. It’s gonna be alright.”

A soft sigh of relief then, like an invisible web of tension had dissolved and Eddie was letting go of something he’d been holding back on.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you,” he said, in a rush of gratitude. 

Richie drove out to LAX and found Eddie waiting for him outside, dressed in a radically uncool white button-up shirt he’d already sweated through and brown slacks that didn’t suit him. He raced to Richie’s car, apparently without a single piece of luggage on him, and collapsed into the passenger seat. His hair was a mess, he was sweaty and dishevelled, he was wild-eyed. He had never looked more beautiful. In his hand he was clutching the photograph from the clubhouse, Richie’s number scrawled on the back. 

Richie smiled at him.

“It’s good to see you,” he said, honestly.

“I missed you,” Eddie said, smiling back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Distance by AJJ
> 
> next chapter is gonna be FUN


	18. 2014: we had our mindset/all things know, all things know/you had to find it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title is Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Eddie didn’t have anything with him except his clothes and his wallet, which was alarming to Richie because when they’d gone to Provincetown he’d just about taken the kitchen sink. Everything about Eddie screamed  _ something is up _ , from the panicked, disbelieving expression on his face, like even he couldn’t believe he had made it, to the fact he seemed to be wearing half of his work suit but clearly wasn’t at work. Richie knew without even asking that Eddie must have driven out of his house and gotten on the first plane to LA without stopping to think about what the hell he was doing and Richie was insanely, incredibly grateful that he had.

“You wanna go get something to eat?” Richie said.

“Yes,” Eddie said. He was leaning back in the passenger seat of Richie’s car, watching the LA scenery flash by as they drove down the highway to Richie’s apartment. He was starting to lose the manic glint to his eye and calm down as they drove. “Do you have any sunscreen?”

“Yeah, uh, check the glovebox.”

Eddie looked at the tube of sunscreen in there suspiciously but apparently judged the situation dire enough to use it, rubbing it into the exposed parts of his body; face, neck, hands, forearms. Richie kept his eyes on the road and didn't think about the sharp bend of Eddie’s wrists. In the early evening light the palm trees swayed in the breeze.

“You ever travelled before?” Richie said.

“No,” Eddie said. “I’ve never been outside Maine except when we went away.”

“Damn. Welcome to the big, wide world.”

He headed to a pretty nice but not overly formal restaurant where they could have a conversation. It was a good Tex Mex place and Richie felt excited about the prospect of introducing Eddie to what was absolutely about to be the best burrito he’d ever had after a lifetime of eating whatever slop they were shovelling in Maine.

“Don’t worry, the food hygiene rating here is great,” Richie said as he parked on the sidewalk. He had furtively checked while waiting at a red light. Eddie gave him a look but didn’t say anything, just rolled his eyes as he got out of the car.

Inside, Eddie looked a little uncomfortable in his surroundings. Richie didn’t know if it was the restaurant, the fact he was in an entirely alien city, or the company, but he felt immediately protective of him. He swept Eddie along to the back of the restaurant where there was a table in a corner tucked away from everyone else. Eddie collapsed into his seat with an exhaustion that suggested the length of the day was really starting to catch up with him, and Richie asked a waiter for some waters. When they came, Eddie chugged his with a ferocity that made it seem like he hadn't drunk in weeks. Richie drew a pattern in the condensation on his own glass and watched him. 

"So… This was a pretty last minute decision, huh?" Richie said. 

Eddie blanched. He put the cup down and stared hollowly at the table. 

“I needed a break,” he said, with some reluctance.

“I get that,” Richie said. “We all need a change every now and then.”

“You really did, apparently. You’ve turned your whole life around." 

There was a trace of something unidentifiable in his voice. Richie shrugged, like it was no big deal and not the culmination of years of being miserable coming to a head. Eddie raised his eyebrows in a way that showed quite how disbelieving of this casualness he was, forehead creasing. He had intensely dramatic lines in his face all over; laughter lines and dimples and creases over his forehead, all of which made him look more defined and clear. He was like artwork with thick outlines, big, bold, black defining lines that marked out all the edges of Eddie Kaspbrak. He was a fascinating person to look at, Richie thought. There was just always something to focus on, like the vast expanse of his eyes (you'd need a full research group with years of generous grants to take the time to map those depths), that constantly worrying mouth, the expressive and agile hands (long, thin, delicate fingers). He was handsome, but in a slightly unusual way, off-beat enough that he stuck out, stuck in your mind. You couldn't forget Eddie Kaspbrak, or at least Richie never could.

"What are you staring at?" Eddie said, glancing over his shoulder like he'd missed something.

"That big fuckin' spot right in the middle of your forehead," Richie said.

Eddie made a noise of confusion and touched his head before realising he was being fucked with and shooting a poisonous look that made Richie cackle. A waiter asked if they'd like some drinks and Eddie asked for a beer with the exhaustion of a man who had been wandering for days through the desert. Richie got one as well, telling himself that it was going to be the only one of the night with a conviction that came easier than his previous, failed attempt to stay sober at the reunion dinner. He knew he would be able to moderate himself this time; it was less of a struggle against his terror of embarrassing himself and the simple understanding he needed to be able to drive Eds home. It was easier, for some reason, to cope with when he was keeping low-key for someone else's benefit. For Eddie's.

Eddie scrutinised the menu for a long time, and Richie knew he was looking for the things he wouldn't allow himself to eat, considering the rules he strictly drew around his life. No cheese, no red meat, nothing with… What, nuts? Cashews? Dairy? Anything from the long, sprawling list of things that Sonia Kaspbrak wouldn't allow anywhere near her son from fear that they would break him like dunking a delicate tropical fish into a bowl full of unfiltered tap water? 

Much to Richie's surprise, when it came time to order Eddie simply sighed, closed the menu, and told the waiter he'd have what Richie was having. 

"That's adventurous," Richie said.

Eddie shrugged. “I don’t know what half of it is, anyway.”

“God, Eds, we gotta get you living. There’s so much life you haven’t lived.”

“I know. I know.” Eddie ran a hand over his hair. It looked nice when it wasn’t plastered to his skull. Richie brushed a stray strand out of his eyes, Eddie's eyes following his fingers.

“How long are you staying?” Richie said. 

Eddie glanced at Richie then away, hands still reaching for something to fiddle with, those long fingers ripping into a paper napkin. “How long will you have me?”

Richie smiled. “I  _ was  _ worried that we wouldn’t have enough time to cover much, but I guess we have all the time in the world.”

Eddie smiled back, his hands going still as the unease melted out of his shoulders. When the food came he ate like he was starving; the heat of the chili did cause him to cough with surprise at first, but he got over it quickly. Eddie had five beers. Richie stuck with one. The talk came easy, mostly about Richie’s last few weeks of lifestyle improvements just because Eddie dodged talking about himself, or about their past, dragging up memories of summers long gone. It felt good to talk about the past and have his memories of it free of the guilt that had been attached to them for years. Finally he was able to just think of times they’d spent together and feel the warmth of those days, of the sun on his skin and the arms of his friends around him, without there being something tugging at him that forced him to turn his back. He felt lighter.

They went back to Richie’s apartment afterwards. Richie considered vaguely if he would take Eddie to the gay bar he’d been frequenting to meet his drag friends but swept the idea away. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Eddie, but he didn’t know  _ what  _ Eddie would say, and he wasn’t sure what he  _ wanted  _ Eddie to say. He was certain Eddie would roll with anything, but Richie wasn’t sure how he could even begin to explain what kept drawing him back there, why he was spending so much time with Sandi and Missy talking about makeup, costumes, personas, routines, the history and culture. He hadn’t figured it all out for himself.

So they went home. Richie’s apartment was not that impressive; it was fairly ordinary, just a twenty story, angular, white concrete block, big windows glinting in the LA light, reflecting the blue of the pool in the courtyard. Most of the people in the building were young professionals in the business, single adults or childless couples, no one particularly famous or that notable. Richie didn’t care either way, but he figured to someone from outside of LA it was probably kind of a letdown. It wasn’t exactly the star-studded glamour of Beverly Hills. Richie threw open the door of his apartment triumphantly, ushering Eddie inside. Eddie looked around for a moment. 

“This is cleaner than I was expecting,” he said.

“High praise!” Richie said. 

The apartment was fine. He wasn’t allowed to repaint the walls so it was mostly white, a few framed posters hanging on the walls, a couple of art prints. He was a frequent flier at Mondo. The shelves were a disorganised mess of books, comics, and films, but it was homey rather than frightening. The furniture came with the place and was unremarkable, though the large sofa in front of the equally impressive TV was a Tozier original and something he was immediately grateful for, because it was where Eddie was going to be laying his head for the foreseeable future ( _ unless we share _ burst into Richie’s head, a thought he immediately discarded like it was a popped balloon). 

Eddie collapsed onto the couch like his legs snapped out from under him. He’d had a few drinks and was lolling easily on the chair, his initial discomfort long gone as he’d fallen into the safety of just being in Richie’s presence. 

“You want anything to drink?” Richie said.

“What have you got?”

“Uh… Water, LaCroix, soda…”

“Oh, I thought you meant alcohol,” Eddie said. 

“Yeah, I don’t keep alcohol in the house anymore.”

Something clicked in Eddie’s brain and he slammed his face into his hands with a little more force than was completely necessary. Richie stood by the kitchen island and half-smiled, something Eddie’s immediate regret endearing.

“You weren’t drinking like, all night. And there’s me just… Sorry. I'm a fucking idiot,” Eddie said.

“No, it’s ok. I didn’t say anything. You’re not psychic.” Richie pulled out a can of LaCroix from the fridge and tossed it to Eddie, who caught it with an unnerving sharpness for someone who was definitely on the drunker side of tipsy. 

“Is it working for you? Not drinking?”

“Eh.” Richie cracked open a can of LaCroix. “It’s fine. It’s more like the drinking wasn’t really doing anything for me. Guess I don’t want shit in my life that’s not… Helping… Or something.”

Eddie nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of his drink, then pulled a face.

“What the fuck is this?” 

Richie laughed. “Oh man.  _ We have such sights to show you _ . Hey, you ever seen Hellraiser?”

“Yes. Or like, most of it? We started watching it in your basement, but then…”

“Oh, right, God, we were like twelve. Mom was so mad.”

“I was glad she turned it off, I thought I was gonna fucking puke.”

They talked idly for a while about what they might do the next day, committing to nothing with the luxury of people who knew they had time and no need to make an itinerary, and ended up watching Hellraiser. Eddie watched half of it through his fingers, yelling dramatically at the gore and making Richie crack up at his melodramatics, the two of them laughing more than watching. Afterwards, Richie set Eddie up on the couch, digging out some fresh sheets and flipping the cushions on Eddie’s request.

“This ok?” Richie said.

“Yeah,” Eddie said. 

Richie thought that if Eddie asked he would let Eddie share the bed with him. But Eddie didn’t ask and Richie thought that was for the best. He went out onto the balcony to smoke a cigarette and called Bill. It was probably gone midnight in Maine but Bill answered quickly anyway, his voice creaky with sleep.

“Richie?”

“Hey, Bill, I just wanted to let you know Eddie is with me. He’s safe,” Richie said. Cars on the highways roared softly in the distance. He thought it would be hot the next day. “He showed up this evening. I would have called earlier but I didn’t want to like… Make a big deal out of it in front of him.”

Bill sighed with audible relief. “That’s good. I’ll let Clara know.”

“Yeah. He seems ok. He just needs a break.”

“I’m glad he’s alright. Some… Stuff happened.”

“Don’t tell me. He’ll tell me on his own time.”

“Alright. Look after him. Love you, Rich.”

“I try. Love you too, man.”

Richie let him go and finished the cigarette half-watching Eddie’s slumbering form on the couch inside. When he gently crept to his room he thought he saw Eddie stirring and waited to see if anything was said but the silence hung over the apartment and Richie went to bed instead.

* * *

Eddie was standing in the middle of the apartment eating a bowl of cheerios, which he had judged as the most acceptable cereal Richie had on offer, though it was still ‘baby food’. He was wearing his own boxer shorts and one of Richie’s T-shirts, which hung off him in huge folds and said YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW BIG IT IS! on the front. Richie was trying to find the right balance of not staring at Eddie’s lean, toned legs and not looking away in a fashion that was overly obvious. 

“I can’t go out dressed like this,” he said.

“We’ll buy you new clothes,” Richie said. He was eating a bowl of lucky charms and sitting on the kitchen countertop, which he could see Eddie fucking hated, but he took a lot of joy in the fact it was  _ his _ kitchen and Eddie couldn’t say anything about it. 

“ _ We’re  _ not buying anything. I’ll buy new clothes. You’re not sugar daddy. I still have money,” Eddie said.

Riche winked at him and salaciously licked his spoon. Eddie glared. Richie wondered what ‘still have money’ meant but didn’t push the issue. All things in their time.

“Alright man, well, just know I will help you with whatever,” Richie said.

“You’re already helping me enough. You don’t need to give me money, too.”

“No, I meant like, fashion advice. You don’t want to look this good?” Richie gestured to the large, loud, shirt he was wearing that morning, with complimentary pink knee-length jorts. Eddie scrutinised them.

“I don’t remember you ever dressing like  _ this  _ loudly.”

Richie shrugged and was about to say something defensive when Eddie seemed to pick up on the fact his ego had been lightly bruised and interrupted with a wave of his hand.

“It suits you, though,” Eddie said. “You look happier.”

“So I do have good fashion advice,” Richie said. 

They went shopping. Eddie paid for himself but there was something undeniably domestic about it all, Richie trailing after Eddie as they walked around the Whole Foods, the two of them talking about their shopping list as if they were a couple filling out their weekly needs. Every now and again in the grocery store, holding a bottle of oat milk or some beetroot or something that Richie would never buy and wouldn’t use, Eddie would suddenly get a look on his face and it was painfully clear what he was thinking. The impulse to put it back, the sudden fear he was imposing through potentially using shelf space in Richie’s apartment. Every time Richie would gently take it from his hand and toss it into the shopping cart. Eventually Eddie finally accepted that there wasn’t going to be a sudden end to Richie’s patience that would reveal a deep lack of tolerance for his shit.

They got clothes afterwards. Eddie was wearing the same things he’d worn yesterday with a suffering that made it clear he felt like dogshit doing so and Richie wanted him to be comfortable. Most of the stuff Eddie picked out was deeply functional and boring -- white button-ups, polo shirts, acceptably bland slacks -- but occasionally he would give into Richie’s prodding to  _ live a little, Eds _ , and select something that didn’t look like he’d pulled it off a mannequin at J.Crew. Nothing crazy. A tasteful purple paisley shirt. Slim-leg jeans. A pair of shorts that weren’t intended for hiking and didn't have pockets for giant water bottles. Eddie always reacted like he was being pushed into doing it but at the same time he was  _ asking  _ to be pushed, picking things out with an expression that said ‘this is crazy, imagine if I got this?’ until Richie gently cajoled him into doing it. He bought enough things to last maybe a week, things that could easily be adopted into his wardrobe when he returned home, unobtrusive reminders that one time in his life Eddie Kaspbrak had done something impulsive and brave. 

Eddie didn’t tell him about why he’d suddenly flown cross-country and Richie didn’t ask. Their unspoken agreement to not talk about it was less an elephant in the room, something huge and obvious they refused to talk about, and more a poltergeist they hadn’t acknowledged was haunting the house. They saw traces of it in Eddie’s ill-preparedness, his halting fear of commitment, the way he talked around himself but never told the full story, but no one pushed the subject. It was easier to say nothing than to go all in and start believing in ghosts.

Richie took Eddie to Santa Monica Pier the next day out of a sense of obligation. What did you do with tourists in LA? He’d never been a tourist here; when he first moved to LA he was broke and living in a storage closet, and by the time he had money he’d been living in LA too long to want to do anything touristy at all. The idea of spending time wandering around the sights like there was any mystique or attraction left in the city when he’d had nights he passed out drunk on the sidewalk was a joke. But he had a sense of duty in showing Eddie a good time. 

“This place is kind of a nightmare,” Eddie said, after about an hour at Santa Monica and one look at the rides.

“You don’t want to go on any of those?” Richie said. He’d been trying to win at a carnival game that involved throwing a basketball through a hoop and had not succeeded. He suspected the hoops were too small but he had been secretly hoping his skills would overcome this disadvantage. They had not.

“I don’t want to die, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No one’s ever died at Santa Monica Pier.”

“That’s Disneyland. People probably die every half fuckin’ hour here. Is this like, where you go? This is where you hang out, in LA?”

“No, fucking of course not.”

Richie failed at the last shot and gave up on the game, saying goodbye to the cheaply made and hideous giant purple teddy that was hanging up on display. He performed a farewell gesture that made Eddie roll his eyes dramatically as they walked further through Pacific Park. They were surrounded by kids, couples, and families, which was always a slightly weird dynamic, when you were two men who didn’t exactly know what their relationship was anymore. Richie was wearing huge dark shades and a ballcap as well, the celebrity’s limp attempt at  _ please leave me alone _ . It had not worked. He had given out one uncomfortable selfie already. Eddie had been asked if he wanted to be part of it -- the taker unclear on if Eddie was famous or not -- but he had refused with a force that left no room for argument.

“Why would you take me somewhere you never come?” Eddie said. They stopped at a ring toss game and Eddie handed over some tickets while Richie leaned on the side and watched.

“I don’t know what tourists do in LA,” Richie said.

“I’m not a tourist,” Eddie said. He threw the first ring and managed to get it on a peg.

“What are you then?”

“I don’t know. Here.”

The second ring also landed on a peg.

“Looking good Eduardo, you might actually win something,” Richie said. He winked. 

“You don’t have to go out of your way to try to impress me or whatever.”

“Yeah, that’s why I took you here, and not to a red carpet event.”

“No, I mean, you don’t have to treat me like I’m a baby and you have to give me a tour. You can just live your life. Work and stuff. I don’t know what I’m even doing here.” Eddie threw another ring and missed, but the fourth one landed.

“Having fun?”

“Yeah. I am. But I don’t want you to have to go out of your way to entertain me. Just be  _ normal _ .”

The fifth ring landed. Eddie chose a violently malformed looking pig teddy and shoved it into Richie’s delighted arms.

“Let’s get out of here then,” Richie said. “You want to get some ice cream?”

“Yeah. Why not.”

They got ice cream and went down to the beach, sitting on the sand and watching the surf. Eddie talked about the advantages of running on sand when you were training and then he talked about poisonous jellyfish and then he talked about wanting to see a basketball game while he was in LA. Richie lay back on the sand using the pig as a pillow and watched the sky and wondered if Eddie would like to go to the automobile museum he knew was around the city somewhere. Fine if Eddie didn’t want Richie to go out of his way to entertain him, for Richie to live his normal life, but it wasn’t strange to want to take your friends places you thought they’d enjoy, right? 

It was normal. There was nothing to worry about. They were having a good time together. Richie took Eddie to restaurants where he ate stuff he’d never tried in his life, not having to coax him out of his shell as much as just enjoy what it was like to have an Eddie Kaspbrak who was ready to rip through everything holding him back and live. They went to the automobile museum and they went to a Lakers game. They tore through box sets of nostalgic movies that Richie adored and only Eddie half-remembered, but loved by the time they finished. Richie dug out his old vintage N64 and wheedled Eddie into playing Mario Kart with him, even though Eddie cheated without remorse, kicking Richie in the shins to try and distract him, pulling his controller cable out, snapping like an annoyed puppy when he lost anyway. 

It reminded Richie powerfully of Provincetown, of how that had felt like a world of no consequence, where they were free to run and play and do anything they wanted. They could eat junk food and fight on the beach, kicking up sand, racing through the surf because Eddie ran so  _ fast _ when people didn’t stand in his way. They could make in-jokes with strangers who didn’t know what the gag was but could see the history and warmth radiating off the two of them. The difference now was that Richie was not anonymous; this was not a vacation from his life, this was who he was. He was a man who could eat what he wanted, go where he wanted, act like a fool in public. He could be unreservedly affectionate towards Eddie and flirt wantonly with any guy he liked, and no one could touch him. If he winked back at the cute guy outside the gar bar, he didn't worry his parents would punish him. Provincetown had been a mystical place because Richie had not ever believed there could be a place in the real world where being open would not end in the destruction of his entire life. In the end, the only answer was to accept that the life he was living wasn’t worth saving. There was no point killing himself for something worthless.

Richie wanted to express all this, but he didn’t have the words. For someone who talked for a living, he wasn’t good at saying the right thing. Maybe that was why his career had been so vastly unsatisfying for years. Maybe he just wasn’t good at it. But the result was that he didn’t tell Eddie anything and he just stood by and watched to see if Eddie understood, that somehow, maybe, he just implicitly understood why Richie had snapped like a dry twig and brought all of his careful walls of lies crashing down almost overnight, and more importantly, that Eddie could do the same thing. 

Six days in Richie had needed to abandon Eddie for a few hours to talk to his manager about their plans for the tour in a few months, and returned to the apartment -- kicking the door open and announcing “Hi honey, I’m home!” at a deafening volume -- to find Eddie watching his old stand-up on YouTube. It was a show from maybe 2008, when Richie was in his early thirties and looked much the same but disconcertingly smoother, before the years of drinking too much had really started showing up in the rough, dark skin around his eyes. He stood in the doorway and stared at Eddie on the couch and the image of himself on the TV screen, the two of them in mutually ashamed silence while the younger Richie rattled out his tired routine.

“There’s guys who have girlfriends and there’s girlfriend guys. Like, I have a girlfriend. We have sex, we go on dates, we get into arguments, mostly because I want to have sex and not go on dates, you get the picture. Girlfriend guys are guys who start dating and then that’s who they are. Their personality is that they have their dick in a vice--”

Eddie finally turned it off, freeing Richie from the embarrassment of having to witness his own form.

“Holy shit, you look like I just caught you in the middle of some gross sex thing,” Eddie said. “I didn’t even know you could look ashamed like this. Your face melted. You look like a bloodhound.”

Richie threw his hands up in protest and slouched past Eddie to the kitchen, discovering Eddie had made a smoothie in the long-neglected blender, and poured himself a glass. He didn’t know what was in it, but it was red, not green, so it was probably going to taste of fruit and not death.

“Why are you watching that shit?” Richie said. “It sucks.”

"I've seen your show, I've seen your commercials, but I never saw any of your stand-up and I just thought… This is what you left to  _ do _ . I should see it," Eddie said. 

"It wasn't what I left to do, it was just what I ended up doing." Richie took a long drink. The smoothie was good. He felt a wave of appreciation for Eddie’s existence.

"You wanted to do stand-up."

"Yeah, but not that. I wanted to be good. I did that shit because I was afraid."

Eddie, sitting on the couch with his legs pulled up on the seat, neatly folded up. He made Richie think of those suitcases in Provincetown, Richie's dirty clothes neatly packed away because Eddie took time and care with them as if Richie's things had any real worth. Like he had always seen that there was value in Richie Tozier, long before the Hollywood machine had decided they could milk some worth out of him. 

"You're going on a new tour though, right?" Eddie said.

"Yeah. New material. New Richie." He wanted to go and sit on the couch beside Eddie. He had done so many times over the past few days and every time had been so easy and so comfortable and they had said nothing about it and every time afterwards Richie had thought about how at any point he could have slipped his hand up Eddie's thigh and maybe Eddie would have liked it. Every time he would remember Eddie's wife and those were the only moments where he saw the shape of the poltergeist in their midst, Richie's brain screaming  _ where is your wife, what's going on, what does she know? _

"It was always weird seeing you on TV because I was always like who the fuck is this guy?" Eddie said. "I couldn't believe how much you'd changed. But then I met you and it was like oh, that was all bullshit. He's the same old Richie."

Eddie stretched out a little, Richie watching the muscles of his shoulders go taught through his T-shirt. 

"It was fucking weird seeing you be the celebrity and have people back home act like they knew you and I was always thinking, man, you guys were the reason he left. Fucking Patrick Hockstetter trying to talk up how you went to school together, like he didn't make your life hell? It was insane. Kids from school who never knew you were trying to act like you were the hometown pride. So fucking weird. It made me so mad. None of them ever knew you like I did… But then I didn't feel like I knew the you on TV either."

"No one knew him," Richie said. "He doesn't exist."

Eddie fiddled with the remote in his hand, clicking the battery cover off and on again. His body was tense. Richie wished he could do something, massage his shoulders, make him melt into the sofa. Richie wanted to make Eddie soft and at ease. The distant sense memory of Eddie's body curled around his made him feel hot under his shirt.

"You should show me your new stuff," Eddie said. 

"You aren't sick of my fucking jokes by now?"

"I spent twenty years without you, I want to see what you're proud of."

Richie had been writing mostly for the benefit of himself and his manager and hadn't workshopped a lot of what he'd written, yet felt a bright excitement at the prospect of performing for Eddie. In many ways he had always been performing for Eddie, the usual  _ look at me look at me look at me _ show, all hands and eagerness and grabbing and that awful hunger for more which had always made him feel like a greedy, sucking, bottomless pit. For Eddie to actually invite it, to see Richie's constant parade and ask for more, for an encore, was like being given his dream job. He would happily entertain Eddie for the rest of his life. 

Richie grabbed his notes from the office and looked around for a stage. He ended up jumping up onto the coffee table, standing a few feet above Eddie, who watched him from the couch with his head tipped back and that smirk on his face that went straight to Richie’s gut. Richie stood up in his usual performing pose, hand gripping an imaginary microphone, doing that ‘I’m on stage’ pace he did on the couple of feet he had either side. 

“I’m a bit further left of what you’d call ‘liberal’ in my personal politics. I protested Bush back in the day when he was something we were worried about. I care about things, you know? I think war is bad and healthcare should be free. I got radicalised because I was gay in the 80s. I mean, I’m gay  _ now _ , but I was  _ specifically  _ gay in the 80s. I had a few precious skinmags I held more dearly than several members of my family, and on the front cover, next to a guy who had the by-line ‘THE MAN BEHIND THE INCHES’ was the headline ‘HOW TO FIGHT THE FBI’. You know, you spend a little time jerking off, you spend a little time reading about the various crimes against humanities the FBI and CIA have committed. I was fifteen years old with a ten year old skinmag I’d found in the woods saying ‘I read it for the articles’ and I wasn’t even lying. Well, I was only half lying. But I was a very impressionable child, it’s why I was in a gang. We used to ride around town on our push bikes and do minor vandalism, because that’s all you could do in Maine as a teenager until they got colour TV in 1994.”

“Boo! We hate Maine!” Eddie heckled. “We only care about LA rich liberal elites!”

Richie flipped him off and Eddie laughed gleefully. 

“But being gay and being in a gang means you have to learn to stand out somehow. It was so much easier pretending to be straight. Straight men don’t have to care about shit, they can do anything they want. If you’re gay, you either have to be a shit-stirrer or you have to look good in a crop top. So it’s obvious what I went for.” He gestured to himself. “The crop-top.”

Eddie was actually laughing, grinning up at Richie and clapping. Richie started cracking up, losing his place and letting the notebook drop to the ground. Eddie booed him again, until Richie stepped off the table and slammed onto the couch next to him, nearly knocking him onto the floor when the cushions bounced, the both of them howling with laughter. 

“That’s fucking funny,” Eddie said as they struggled to make themselves both fit, Richie sitting upright and Eddie now lying on his back. 

“The stand-up or my Leaning Tower of Pisa act?” 

“The stand-up. And I’d know, since I’m now a connoisseur of your body of work.”

“You’re the oldest and the longest Richie Tozier fanboy, so I think you have the most authority in the world to comment on my dumb act.”

“It’s definitely very dumb, but I like it.” Eddie stretched out and laid his feet in Richie’s lap. “You really want to get up there and talk about being gay? You were always so uncomfortable.”

“I am uncomfortable, but I want to talk about it,” Richie said with a shrug. He had a hand on Eddie’s shinbone. Eddie was wearing jeans. There was nothing even remotely sexy about a fully clothed shinbone and yet having his hand on it felt like the single most overwhelmingly erotic experience of Richie’s entire life. 

“That’s good. It’s good you want to talk about it.”

Silence hung over the two of them. They were holding each other's gaze for a long time, Eddie’s wide black eyes on Richie’s blue-grey, neither of them breaking it. Richie’s thumb was pressed on the hard bone of Eddie’s leg, fingers over the flesh. If he pressed down, he could feel the muscle. Richie thought about all the other things he could tell Eddie. He waited to see if Eddie was going to tell him any of the things he could be saying. 

“It’s good to open up,” Richie said, pointedly.

“I’m just glad you’re happy now,” Eddie said.

They kept staring. Richie wanted very badly for there to be something else. Would it be fair of him to say that he was always happy when he was with Eds? When he’d rejected him like a month ago? 

“Hey, I got invited to some stupid party tomorrow,” Richie said. “It’ll mostly be work people, but it could be fun, if you want to go?”

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said, looking surprised but pleased with the suggestion, smiling softly. 

When Richie went to bed that night, like many nights, he slept with his arm out over the space next to him, wishing it was being warmed by someone else’s presence. The fact Eddie was a few feet away from him never felt more painfully prominent in his mind.

* * *

The party was at the home of a producer who worked for a company that made sitcoms, which meant it was full of comedians, which meant it was going to be half people who were decent and half try-hards new to the scene who were there to try out their material on anyone who stood still long enough to get trapped in conversation. Richie was enormously grateful he had Eddie with him when they showed up that evening because it meant he had some kind of a buffer between the people he didn’t like, someone to roll his eyes at when he was forced to stand through hours of bad conversation. 

“You’re gonna realise pretty fast that I’m being the real asshole subjecting you to this,” Richie said as they walked to the front door.

“You’ll just have to owe me a favour,” Eddie said. He was wearing new clothes, a purple cashmere sweater that made him look soft but accented the pretty radical shoulder to hip ratio he had. He hadn’t had anything decent and they’d bought something special. He was keeping clothes in Richie’s closet now, something that felt like the most laughably overt metaphor that if Richie had seen it in a screenplay he would have groaned. Unfortunately, it was his life. 

“My undying love?” Richie said.

“Worthless.”

_ Yeah, I guess you already have that _ , Richie thought.

They were welcomed in by Diwata, who Richie sort of knew and generally liked, who welcomed them both enthusiastically enough that the anxiety that was written over Eddie's face like the scribblings of a seismograph died down to a low hum. The big quake wouldn't happen.

Most of the people there were also producers, agents, showrunners, execs. People who were powerful but behind the scenes, not the big faces. Richie didn’t know if Eddie was more or less comfortable with that than he would have been with walking into a house full of famous actors, but Eddie seemed nonplussed, just leaned his shoulder on Richie’s arm as they walked inside, a tiny show of mutual support. It was fairly busy inside, people wandering throughout the open plan house and the large backyard carrying canapes and cocktails with a lack of urgency that put it in a violent contrast to the intense, crowded focus of the reunion party. 

People who knew Richie were immediately interested in who Eddie was but surprisingly, people who  _ didn’t  _ know Richie were interested in who Eddie was. A couple of producers he knew were fascinated by Eddie’s presence, looking at the two of them as if they were admiring a matched set of bookends. Richie felt shockingly smug when an agent he didn’t know came over to ask if Eddie had done any modelling and Eddie had to explain he worked in finance, looking around like he thought he’d been asked a trick question and only looking more astonished when she handed him her card. Richie laughed outrageously and draped an arm over Eddie’s shoulders to steer him over to meet some comedians he actually knew and liked. They welcomed Eddie into their midst with a curiosity you only got from people who forgot what it was like to hang around with people totally outside of their industry, asking how Richie and him knew each other.

“You went to  _ middle school  _ together?” Diwata asked. “God, I don’t think I talk to  _ anyone _ from my hometown.”

“What the hell do you talk about for thirty years?” A comedian called Roy asked. 

“It’s Richie, so nothing smart,” Eddie said. “I think when you’ve known someone for thirty years you don’t have to talk that much as you just let loose everything you ever think.”

“What are you doing in LA? Just visiting?”

“Yeah, just on vacation.”

“You liking it out here?”

“No idea. It’s crazy. I’ve never left Maine, so I feel like I’m on fucking Mars. It’s doing wonders for my road rage, though.”

“You watch much comedy? You watch a lot of TV?”

“Some, yeah. I saw your special on Comedy Central.”

“You like it?”

“No.”

Laughter, Richie still proud of Eddie, his arm still around his shoulder.

They mingled, drinking champagne, eating tiny finger foods. Eddie complimented Diwata on her sense in having ingredients lists on display for all the food and they talked about food and catering and allergies, and Eddie ate everything he’d never been allowed to and drank more cocktails. Every time he laughed there were those lines around his eyes that showed how far he had come from the boy he had been when Richie had left him, but Richie found himself adoring that new feature. He loved every new feature on Eddie’s face, he loved that Eddie was effortlessly gliding around a party with hundreds of strangers because he talked with a confidence that came from not caring if he knew who any of them were or not.

It wasn’t until Richie caught sight of them in a mirror hanging on Diwata’s study wall that he realised the two of them were dressed to match. No wonder they were getting looks the way they had been; Eddie’s purple sweater and brown chelsea boots complimenting Richie’s striped short-sleeve button-up and slim slacks, the two of them looking not only as if they were a couple but a couple who  _ coordinated outfits. _ Eddie was engaged in conversation with an actor of some fame who Eddie didn’t recognise, which was deeply funny to Richie, and was talking about jogging in a conversation they were both very invested in but Richie understood precisely none of, and didn’t notice where Richie was looking. In a way, Richie was glad of that. He just stood for a moment and admired the way they both looked when they were paired up like this. The thought  _ it could be like this all the time _ occurred to him. It could be. They could live their whole lives together, if they wanted to. Going to work parties like this could be something regular. They could dress to match, or not, every night. In the wordless reflection of the mirror, where they had no story, Richie could see the picture of them together and think of another life.

It took a moment before Eddie turned his head the way Richie had been looking. Richie was standing behind Eddie, as he had been for much of the night, and had a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. Their eyes met in the mirror and the smiles they’d been wearing disappeared for a second as they took in the sight of them both standing there. He thought they both saw it then, the potential for that other life, the one they had always assumed would never happen.

“How long have you two been dating?” The actor asked.

“We’re not d-" Richie began.

“We’re married,” Eddie said, whip-fast, smiling again.

* * *

After two weeks Eddie had washed all his new clothes twice and was cycling back through them. He jogged every morning and Richie’s neighbour had started striking up conversation with him when he did, something Eddie half-tolerated with the briskness he used to talk to strangers when he didn’t understand why they were bothering him but was starting to constitute the beginnings of a friendly relationship. He made them both breakfast most days and they ate dinner together every night. They were planning to go grocery shopping together again, made a list that was stuck on the front of the fridge with a magnet they’d picked out together when they were tooling around tourist traps. 

They’d both had multiple conversations with the other Losers by this point; Eddie had called Bill and Mike in a Derry Losers Club conference call, the three of them talking in low tones about the things that Richie hadn’t really been filled in on yet while Richie hung back in his office and tried not to be obtrusive. He caught snapshots of things anyway, information filtering through, words like  _ laid off _ and  _ lawyers _ and  _ medication _ . Stuff that made Richie’s gut tight with anxiety. 

They’d had group calls as well, all seven of them chatting and arguing and laughing over the phone, the sounds of children or dogs occasionally interrupting and reminding Richie of how it had felt to be engaged in the world’s most serious debate at thirteen only to have your parents walk in and interrupt it right when it was at its peak. They discussed plans for Bev and Ben’s wedding, which was horrifyingly closer than Richie had expected, looming on the horizon like a beautiful, frightening storm. Beverly did not seem particularly stressed by any of it, quipping that they were going to be married at the end whether it rained or not, but Ben’s uncontrollable romantic side was out in full force, his desperation for the day to be perfect shining through in the incredible earnestness with how he talked about flowers and table settings.

On days Richie was busy he’d leave Eddie to his own devices and go to work knowing that he had someone to come home to; he would return from a meeting or from a day of writing and they would eat dinner together, something Eddie had bought or made, and then they would enjoy their evenings. On days he didn’t work they would do whatever they wanted; explore the city, eat at restaurants, go to films or shows. It felt both like the easy, responsibility-free days of summer and as though there was something boiling in the background. The poltergeist made itself more known; Richie saw it more at nights now when he stared at the closed bedroom door and wished it wasn’t there. It was easy to never name the unspoken things, but their footprints kept showing up in the dust. 

“You want to go meet some of my friends?” Richie said one evening. It was looking to be a hot night, the sky a burned umber that turned gold on the horizon, the sun white and heavy in the sky. The two of them were sitting on his balcony overlooking the pool, the slight breeze that ruffled the fluffy hair on Eddie’s head the only solace from the heat that wouldn’t shift.

“Sure,” Eddie said. He smiled softly. He was wearing one of Richie’s button-up shirts, the material loose and light on him. The buttons hung low; it would have been done up to Richie’s throat, but on Eddie it showed off his collarbone and sternum, the hair on his chest. Richie liked the hair on his chest.

“This is… It’s not like the other places I hang out.”

“Not a circus?”

“Funny. It’s not a comedy club or a theatre. It’s a bar.”

“Ok?”

“It’s a gay bar.”

“Ok.”

Eddie was watching him with something that was gentler than suspicion; more searching, scanning the horizon for the land they were headed towards. He knew something was there, but he didn’t know what, or why, but he wanted to. He wanted to know for Richie. He wanted to understand.

Richie knew from the bar’s schedule that Sandi and Missy would be performing that night. He knew they would want to hang out with him -- both had messaged him to ask where he had been over the last couple of weeks and he had explained he was spending time with a friend, touched by the fact they cared enough to ask where he’d been. He liked them but had assumed their interest in him was, to some degree, just politeness. The concept of people missing him when he wasn’t around was starting to grow to be familiar. 

When they got there Sandi was on stage, mid-act. Sandi, who was a tall, tan, blond cis man who split his time between performing and being very involved in some art collective, played Angel, who was tall, and beautiful, and had voluminous blue hair and elaborate makeup involving crystals and glitter, embracing the mixture of glamour and trashy that was camp. Richie thought she looked incredible, and he loved the act too, the mixture of acting, comedy, storytelling. He’d talked with Sandi about it at length. Missy did it differently; more working with the audience, more song, a wildly different style. Everyone had their own self-expression, something Richie found more exciting than he could really explain easily.

“This is a lot more relaxed than the last time we went to see a drag show,” Eddie said quietly as they sat at the bar and watched the show.

“Yeah, things are gonna have to get pretty crazy for us to get chucked out this time,” Richie said, grabbing a couple of drinks for them both. The bartender, who he knew from the time he’d spent there, was happy to see him back, and the two of them talked briefly, just catching up, as Richie let the warmth of people wondering where he was and wanting to see him settle over him. Eddie watched the two of them talk more than he watched the show for those few minutes, that soft small smile on his face the whole while.

Thankfully they did get to see the end of it this time, Angel giving her audience a wave as she stepped off the stage to applause. She had spotted Richie in the crowd and made a beeline for him and Eddie.

“Who’s this? This is why you’ve ghosted us for weeks?” She said, gesturing to the surprised looking Eddie. “He looks like  _ Bambi _ .”

“This is Eddie,” Richie said. “He’s the boy from the story?”

“He’s  _ the boy _ from  _ the story? _ ” Angel said, her already huge blue eyes roughly the size of dinner plates.

“What story?” Eddie said.

“Oh my God. Where’s Missy, I know she’s around here somewhere. Wait here.”

Eddie looked at Richie as Angel vanished to go find Missy.

“What story?” Eddie said, a little more insistently.

“Just told them about how I knew you,” Richie said.

Eddie frowned, unconvinced. Angel and Missy appeared out of the crowd, swooping down on the pair of them. 

“This is  _ the boy _ from  _ the story _ ,” Angel said. “And he  _ doesn’t know _ .”

“He doesn’t  _ know? _ ” Missy echoed.

“ _ He doesn’t know he’s the boy from the story _ .”

“Oh my  _ God _ .”

Eddie was looking increasingly like he was worried he was on a gameshow he didn’t know how to play, and that was before Angel and Missy ushered the two of them backstage, Missy linking arms with Eddie and talking like she’d known him for years as she escorted him to the dressing rooms. Angel hung back a minute by the door into the backroom, a gentle hand on Richie’s arm to hold him still.

“If he’s here with you now, then does that mean…?” Sandi said, out of character, voice filled with genuine concern. "If he doesn't  _ know _ …" 

“He just kind of turned up?” Richie said. “So he’s been staying with me a while. Something… I don’t know. Something happened. So he came to me.”

Sandi frowned. “If he doesn’t know… Are you alright? Does he know how you feel?”

“No, I think he does. And I know… He feels… Something.”

“This is complicated, huh?”

“It’s thirty years of will-they-won’t-they.”

“But you brought him here.”

“Well… It matters to me. I want him to know about the stuff I care about.”

Unexpectedly, Sandi hugged him then, squeezing him tightly and warmly and nearly knocking the air out of him. After a second, Richie hugged him back. 

“C’mon, before Missy tries to put that doll-sized man into a purse and run off with him,” Sandi said, leading Richie by the hand backstage.

In the dressing room, Missy was holding court, sitting in one of the makeup chairs as she explained at length to a fascinated-looking Eddie how they’d ended up meeting Richie. 

“--The interview was like, kind of crap, but he couldn’t get enough of  _ us _ and now he’s  _ basically  _ been our stalker for like, months. We’ve been working on stuff though, haven’t we?” Missy said as Richie and Sandi walked in. “Richie, should we show your boy toy your ideas?”

“It’s not that much,” Richie said.

“You want to do drag?” Eddie said, with so much affection and genuine enthusiasm that Richie couldn’t help but smile back, his heart tensing in his chest.

“Yeah, I think so.” It was the first time he’d actually told someone else about it. 

“Show me!”

They did Richie’s makeup. He was getting better at it, with some guidance, but more importantly, he also knew the way he liked to look. He knew how he liked to accentuate his face, to draw more attention to the things that made his face uniquely him.  _ I’m Richie _ , his look said. 

They couldn’t talk Eddie into trying any makeup -- he didn’t like the feeling of it on his skin -- but he sat while Richie worked on his face, watched with earnest joy as the transformation took place. Blue eyeshadow, highlighter for those cheekbones, lip liner just right. Missy kept gently scolding him for smiling because the laughter lines were messing with her ability to do his eyeshadow, but he couldn’t help it. It just burst out of him every time he looked at Eddie.

“What do you think?” Richie said when the makeup was done. His hair was still tied back in a ponytail. He hadn’t worked out what he was going to do with it yet; Sandi was trying to sell him on a wig that would curl in around his face, but he hadn’t made up his mind.

“I’m still working out what I want to do. I’m enjoying figuring it out, though,” Richie said.

“You have a name or anything picked out?” Eddie said.

“No, I’m still figuring out what works for Richie.”

Eddie nodded. “You look fucking incredible.”

“I feel pretty incredible,” Richie said. 

* * *

They were drunk. Eddie was crying with laughter as he fell through the door of Richie’s apartment, stumbling over his own feet to fall heavily onto the couch and then immediately slip off it and hit the floor, something that made them both laugh harder. He managed to stagger back to his feet and went to the kitchen while Richie went to the bathroom to wash his face. Richie watched the makeup smear away as he wiped his face and stopped for a moment to admire the stark difference between his face half done and half undone. It was both him and also more of him and in his drunken state he found himself staring at his grey-blue eyes in the mirror and wondering at it. 

A bottle of water bumped into his elbow and he turned to see Eddie standing behind him.

“Hey. You admiring yourself?” Eddie said. Richie took the water bottle from him.

“Yeah, kinda. I like the makeup?” Richie said.

“You should.”

“I should do more of it. Like, outside.”

“You should. You should do what you like.”

Richie drank the water and finished cleaning his face. He walked out of the bathroom and couldn’t see Eddie in the living room or kitchen, and knew immediately where he was. The bedroom was five or six steps away but Richie was extremely aware of every one of them as he walked to the door of his room. He thought again of the poltergeist leaving footprints everywhere.

Eddie was lying back on the bed, head propped up against the headboard, looking at his phone. It was gone midnight but through the blinds he was illuminated in yellow lights from the street, dashed lines like bars. Not consciously but from a deeper part of his mind, Richie remembered being in Eddie’s kitchen once, sitting at the table and sobbing, the shadows there falling over him, trapped inside the bars the town created. 

He turned on the ceiling light so the room was flooded with bright light. Eddie threw an arm over his face to shield his eyes, grinning despite squinting at Richie. 

"Hey," he said.

"Make yourself at home," Richie said.

"I am at home."

The poltergeist had started flinging books across the room. 

"True that." 

Richie walked in and fell heavily onto the mattress face-first. The world was lightly spinning and he lay face down on the blanket for a minute. There was a pause, but then Richie began to feel Eddie's fingers running over his hair, brushing out the kink that had formed from being held in place by the elastic hairband. It was nice. Richie made a soft noise involuntarily, something as close to a purr as a human could make. 

“Hey, so what was the story?” Eddie said.

“About us going to the drag bar in Provincetown,” Richie said into the mattress. 

Eddie kept softly stroking his hair, the strands falling through his fingers.

"Why did you take me out to the bar?" Eddie said.

Richie moved his head to look up at Eddie, who was staring into the middle distance. 

"It's part of my life," Richie said. "I wanted you to see what life could be like if you lived here."

The poltergeist was shaking the entire house apart. 

"You haven't asked why I'm here the whole time."

"If you wanted to tell me you would tell me. I trust you."

Eddie ran a hand over his face. He was looking scruffier than he had in Derry, his hair untrimmed and some stubble on his face, like he'd stopped micromanaging every aspect of how he looked and was starting to relax, just a little. He was still wearing Richie's shirt. Richie thought it suited him. The soft blue looked good on him, but then again, Richie thought Eddie looked good in everything. 

“The day I flew here. I couldn’t stop thinking about how Henry Bowers might be the one to find my body,” Eddie said. He sat up to look at Richie. The overhead light made them both look incredibly exposed. The whiteness of it reflected in rings in his eyes, glimmering against the dark.

“What?” Richie said, a little startled. With some small effort he sat up, sitting on his folded knees and watching Eddie. He put out a hand to hold Eddie's shin again, the hard bone and the taught muscle.

“Let me start over,” Eddie said. “I was at work. And I was supposed to be going to another meeting with Clara and our divorce lawyers. She’d called me during my lunch break and told me about how my anger was crushing her spiritual joy and I told her that I wouldn’t be so angry if she’d let me take my medication, and then she said I was a brainwashed mommy’s boy. And then I walked into my office, and this guy… This guy, Tony… I fucking hate Tony. And he says to me ‘Hey, Ed, is it really all that bad?’ And he started laughing at me and this is a guy whose idea of entertainment is watching monster truck rallies.”

“Hey, monster truck rallies can be fun,” Richie said. Eddie shot him a look.

“This is a guy who used to gloat to me about how he’d developed a secret poker strategy that was just counting and how his wife couldn’t tell him off for looking at the nineteen year old interns. And I was thinking fuck, I work  _ here  _ with  _ this guy _ and  _ he’s married _ and  _ I’m _ getting divorced and I’ve done nothing with my life that’s worth anything, and the man I’m in love with lives on the other side of the country and I don’t talk to him because I’m too scared to pick up the phone, and then I threw a stapler at him.”

Richie laughed. “A stapler?”

“Like a big one. I missed. But it knocked a picture off the wall and the picture broke.”

“Jesus. Could have taken his fucking head off.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said. And then my boss told me that this workplace wouldn’t tolerate my behaviour and this was the last strike against me and I had to leave.”

“So you got fired?”

“Yeah. And then I was thinking about how I had to drive home back to my mother’s house, where I’d been living with my wife for my entire life, and there was a commercial on Spotify for the show you used to be on. That you quit. And I was thinking fuck. Richie hated that show, so he just quit. He just left. I didn’t  _ choose _ to lose anything. I just waited it out until I lost it all, like a fucking loser. And I started thinking that the Kissing Bridge is on the way home, and if I drove over it I might drive off it on purpose this time. Like, I spent my entire life working for this job and I lose it because I try to fight a guy who says he wants to be the Don Draper from Mad Men but all that really means is he’s a misogynist? But then I was thinking if I die in this town…”

“Henry Bowers might have to find you.”

“Yeah. And I was thinking how fucking funny he would find it. If after all this, I end up dead in the river, and he found me? Like, fuck, I might not have much fucking dignity but at least Henry Bowers hasn’t found me dead in a puddle and isn’t laughing at my corpse. So, uh, I got on a plane and flew out here instead.”

Richie didn’t quite know what to say. Eddie had his arms crossed tightly over his chest and wasn’t meeting Richie’s eyes. 

"I didn't want to tell you," Eddie said, "because I didn't want you to think I was a fucking loser. I kept thinking about… When you went back to LA I thought I'd call you, but then you flipped your entire life around and my life was falling apart. And I just thought fuck, I can't call him. He'll think I'm a fucking loser."

"We are fucking Losers. We've always been fucking Losers. I'm a huge Loser."

"No you aren't. You decided what you wanted your life to be and then you went out and did it. You decided you wanted to move to LA and then you did. You decided you wanted to be a comedian and you did. You decided you wanted to come out and turn your life around and you did it. You decided to get into drag and you’re doing it. You decided to kiss me. You've always just done what you wanted in your life. You knew what wasn't working so you fixed it, if that was the place or the job or the people. You just did it. I did everything I was ever supposed to in my life and I am fucking miserable," Eddie said. "I've been  _ so _ miserable. I hated my fucking job. I didn’t like my wife. I don't like where I live. Now I've lost my job and I'm getting a divorce. I did everything I was supposed to and I  _ hate my fucking life. _ "

"You're miserable because you've been trying to live your life for someone else," Richie said. "You've never tried living your own life."

"I'm such a fucking coward," Eddie said, smiling at him, like he was expecting Richie to start laughing and wanted to be in on the joke first. "I was so scared of doing anything I wanted that I wasted my entire fucking life. You're the bravest person I know, and I feel fucking pathetic compared to you."

Richie had not at any point ever considered himself brave. It had just not ever occurred to him, mostly because he had spent forty years living with the fear and anxiety that constantly span around his brain like a flock of angry birds. 

"I don't want you to look at me and feel pathetic. I want you to feel like you could live however you want too," Richie said. “And that you can be in my life too.”

"Shit." Eddie pushed his face into his hands and sighed raggedly.

"What?"

"I kept thinking about telling you how much of a fucking loser you are and having this picture in my head where you say something nice but I can tell you're judging me and I'd know it was a fucking mistake to talk to you. Then I'd just be able to go home and be sad and get over you but think 'well it never would have worked out anyway he was always too good for you, you piece of shit'." Eddie pressed the palms of his hands over his eyes tightly. "But you had to say exactly the right thing that would make me actually feel better, you fucking asshole. You fucking dick!"

Richie reached out and pulled Eddie's hands away from his face before he permanently blinded himself. Eddie's eyes were red and wet, almost ready to cry.

"I've always been a fucking dick. I'm great at it. Even when I make you feel better I'm a fucking dick about it," Richie said. "I didn't fix my life because I cast a magic fucking spell. I just knew I had to change something or I was going to blow my fucking brains out, and it felt easier to just cut down on drinking." 

“Fuck.”

Eddie threw his arms around Richie’s neck and pulled him in for a hug that was so tight it knocked the air out of him completely. Richie hugged him back instantly, pulling Eddie in close so he could feel the warmth of him, how strong and alive he was, how warm his body was, how powerful his heartbeat. Richie felt all this as he pressed his face into the crook of Eddie’s neck and breathed him in. He smelled like whiskey and smoke and Richie’s detergent and he also smelled like something that went back to the furthest reaches of nostalgia in Richie’s mind and made him want to sob, for reasons he couldn’t fully understand. Eddie crushed a hand in his hair and pressed his cheek to the top of Richie’s head and held him as close as he could, heart pounding in his chest.

“I want to be happy,” Eddie said.

“You can be happy,” Richie said.

"I want to be happy. I want to be happy and I want  _ you _ ." 

“I’m so -- I’m so fucking lonely, Eddie.”

“I’m here.”

“I’ve been lonely for such a long time I forgot… I forgot what it was like to have someone want you. I want you so badly. I’ve never stopped wanting you. I thought… I always thought you’d move on. And I couldn’t sit there and watch you move on and not need me. I thought you could make a life for yourself without me. But I couldn’t watch it. I thought I was selfish to want you.”

“I don’t want a life without you. You’re not selfish. I want you to want me. Please want me.”

“I do. I want you. I’ve always wanted you. Fuck. I want you so much it hurts.”

“I’ve only ever wanted you. I want you so badly.”

“You have me. You’ve got me.”

“Can I kiss you?”

“Please kiss me. Please kiss me.”

“I love you.”

“I love you so much. I’ve always loved you.”

“Please kiss me again.”

And he did, and he did.

* * *

The blinds were still open and Richie woke up with the sun in his face. He groaned and tried to bury his head deeper into the bed, pressing his face against Eddie’s collarbone. Eddie squirmed and sleepily tightened his grip around Richie, still resting his chin on the top of Richie’s head. Despite his best efforts Richie was slowly beginning to wake up, unable to really fight off the wakefulness that was gripping him. He started to become aware that the arm that was trapped under Eddie’s body was fully asleep, and once he’d noticed how tingly and weird it felt he couldn’t  _ stop  _ noticing it. He sighed, blinking as the sight of Eddie’s chest one centimetre from his eyes came more into focus.

“Eds, my arm’s asleep,” he said. His mouth was dry and his body was sore, but it wasn’t anything too bad. He’d be fine if he got breakfast in him. Mm. Breakfast.

“Mnwha? Reechie?” Eddie said, incoherently.

“My arm’s asleep. Eds.”

Eddie grumbled and rolled over, leaving the faint trace of warmth on Richie’s body where his hands had been a few moments ago. Richie rubbed his eyes and sat up, blinking incoherently. His shoulders were stiff and he stretched out, groaning, while Eddie also dragged himself into consciousness. After a moment, Eddie blinked himself awake, looking up at Richie with huge brown eyes.

“Hi,” Richie said.

“Hi,” Eddie said. He had dimples when he smiled. Richie wanted to kiss them.

“You want some coffee?”

“More than anything else in the fucking universe.”

Richie stretched and went to stand up.

“Wait,” Eddie said.

“What?”

“Kiss me good morning.”

“I thought you wanted coffee more than anything else in the universe?”

“I want this more than coffee. Kiss me good morning.”

Richie kissed him. Eddie kissed him back but then pulled away, making a comical face of overreaction.

“You have morning breath,” he said.

“You asked for it, bitch.”

Richie laughed wheezily as he rolled out of bed, Eddie tossing a pillow after him. He headed out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker, watching it hum loudly as it filtered coffee into the pot. In the distance, he could hear Eddie clambering out of bed and muttering to himself, probably about his joints or how he was too old to drink like that, something boring and middle-aged and normal, the kinds of things he grumbled about every morning, and Richie felt blessed that he knew what Eddie Kaspbrak complained about when he woke up in the mornings. 

He grabbed some mugs from the cupboard and was about to pour the coffee out when he heard his phone go off and he wandered halfway across the apartment so he was within reasonable throwing range for Eddie to toss it to him as he passed by on his way to the kitchen.

“We’re like a well-oiled machine,” Richie said.

“Oil this,” Eddie said. 

“Don’t know what that means, but I like the energy, Kaspbrak.”

Richie looked at his phone screen and came to a violent halt, the good mood hitting a wall and violently derailing. All lives lost. Pouring coffee in the kitchen, Eddie picked up on something wrong just from the way Richie’s shoulders slumped, his head snapping over to Richie, watching with enormous concern as Richie answered the phone.

“Dad?” Richie said. 

“Hi, Rich.” Wentworth Tozier’s voice sounded older. Unsurprising. Richie hadn’t talked to him in twenty years. He sounded afraid, which was a new one. Richie didn’t know if he’d ever heard his father sounding scared.

“What’s… Are you… How are you?” What the fuck did you say to someone you abandoned for twenty years? 

“I’m alright. I’m ok. It’s your mother. She’s not well.”

“Oh. Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Richie's stand-up was co-written by my friend Lore. check out their current social media au Aberration at [@aberration_au](https://twitter.com/aberration_au) is is one of the coolest and most inventive and creative fics you will ever read.
> 
> check out my other work on twitter!  
[Turtle Creek](https://twitter.com/turtlecreek_tv)  
[Unbroken Line](http://twitter.com/unbrokenline_au)


	19. 2014: you can hide your heart inside a man-made house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry. writer's block
> 
> title is The War is Over by Cage the Elephant

There were no last minute flights to Bangor but there was one to Boston, so they decided to just take that and drive up. It meant they’d be getting to Derry late, but they’d be able to go to Bangor in the morning instead of waiting the day for another flight. At least this way they’d have all of the next day to spend with Richie’s parents, whatever that implied. He was struggling to fill in the next few steps in his journey; whenever he allowed his mind to consider what it might be like to see his parents again he only got as far as picturing the long, sterile hallways that stood between them, unable to envision what it would be like to walk into that room and suddenly have their eyes on him. 

It was easier to break the journey down into steps. When the flights were booked Eddie packed while Richie arranged to rent a car over the phone. He sat on the bed with his phone to the ear listening to the holding music jingling while Eddie meticulously packed their luggage, carefully folding clothes in the optimal way to preserve space but also prevent creases. There was a little crease between Eddie’s eyebrows as he frowned in concentration but when he looked up and saw Richie watching him he smiled. A tight band wound around Richie’s stomach loosened a little.

They hadn’t talked about what their future would be. It felt like a bad time. 

“You don’t have to come back to Maine,” Richie said. “If you don’t want to.”

Eddie stared at him blankly. “And do what? Wait here for you to get back?”

“Yeah, I don’t know. Have a vacation.”

“I didn’t come here for the fresh air.”

There was no room in Eddie’s tone for argument. He wasn’t interested in it, and besides, Richie didn’t have the mental energy. In truth he didn’t know what he would have done if Eddie had packed him up and sent him off by himself; the idea of wandering around LAX in a haze as he waited for his flight was astonishingly pitiful. He was grateful for Eddie’s hand on his as they walked through the airport, as well as the aura of  _ fuck off _ that Eddie radiated that made at least one person rethink approaching Richie and back away, allowed them to remain in their bubble. He waited in the lounge and held a cup of coffee tightly even when it burned his fingers, pulled his baseball cap low over his eyes in the hope that this would disguise himself a little.

Richie turned over the cold hospital hallway in his mind. He had spent very little time in hospitals in his adult life, more time on hospital sets, and there was a distinct falseness to the mental picture that kept playing in his mind. No hospital would be as untouched as the one in his mind, or as featureless. But he couldn’t fill in the details; the more he thought about it only made how little he knew more apparent. Had his mother been sick a long time? How was his father? How had they aged? How did they live, now? He had no answers and letting his mind wander to consider how many possibilities there were and how much he’d missed was a mistake. He put his face in his hands, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Hey,” Eddie said.

Richie looked up at him. He was standing over Richie with a protective alertness, partially blocking him from view, partially poised to rush to his aid, if it was needed.

“It’s going to be ok,” Eddie said.

“What was it like,” Richie said, “when your mom died?”

Eddie was holding a cup of iced coffee and the condensation on the plastic was dribbling down his fingers. He placed the cup down on a chair next to Richie, stopped to wipe his hand. 

“It was different,” he said. “She was sick for a long, long time. I was… Waiting for her to die. It was inevitable.”

“Death is always inevitable,” Richie said, maybe a little too lightly.

“Yeah, but I was  _ waiting _ for it.” Eddie took a deep breath and let it out again slowly. “The thing they don’t tell you, about watching someone die, is that when it’s all over you’re relieved. A part of me was guilty about that, but the truth is yeah, I was… Glad it was over.”

Richie reached out then to hold his wrist, pull him closer. Eddie didn't move for a second but then gave in, followed Richie's guidance and came to sit next to him. 

“There was a moment after she died where I was standing outside the hospital, trying to get some air. I remember… I remember really clearly I had the thought… ‘You’re safe now’. And it scared the shit out of me.” 

There was an ache in Richie’s chest, like the pressure of squeezing onto something for too long, the muscles in your fist complaining from the strain. He slowly breathed in and out to try and lessen it, but it remained dully painful, an old wound flaring up again. The image of Eddie, not yet thirty and all alone in the world, standing in the hospital parking lot and being afraid of the precipice he stood by haunted Richie like the memory of a bad dream. 

“You could have done anything,” Richie said. “You could have gone anywhere.”

“I know,” Eddie said. “That was why I got married. So I wouldn’t.”

Richie put an arm around his shoulder. Eddie leaned over, head fitting neatly into the crook of his neck. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make this all about me,” Eddie said.

“Don’t be stupid, I asked.”

They boarded the flight an hour or so later, took their seats, Richie leaning heavily against the window. Eddie did not stop touching him the entire time; whether it was a hand on his, the crush of their elbows together on the armrest, or leaning in over him to look out of the window as they took off, their shoulders flush. Even when he was distracted, reading some article on his phone or listening to some audio book, he didn’t let go of Richie.

In the air, a strange calmness fell over everything. The sky felt like a timeless place. Richie watched as LA shrunk below them, growing small, dissolving into a spiderweb of roads and lights, stopped being a city and became a concept. Without him there to disturb it his apartment would exist in quiet slumber, unchanged and unaffected. In Maine, life had continued without him, the scar that may have been left by his absence had long healed. High above the world he considered the attachments he had that mattered to him.

It was the time and distance from his childhood that had afforded him the complacency that allowed him to go twenty years without talking to his parents again. On the other side of the country he had no real reason to think about his parents or his past, and because he didn’t think about it, he took no action to change any of it. The longer he went without attempting contact the easier it became to never do so; like a lost object sinking through still waters things had settled into place and remained undisturbed. It would have remained that way forever if Went Tozier had never called. Now Richie had to fully consider the idea that his parents were not frozen in the stasis of 1994. The realisation was a stone in the gears that powered his blissful ignorance and left Richie like a stalled engine, gasping now to get back into motion. 

But he couldn’t just yet. Not until he knew the full picture. 

“You alright?” Eddie said, interrupting the flow of thought in Richie’s mind.

“The stewardess isn’t looking,” Richie said. “Want me to give you a handjob in the bathroom? Finally join an exclusive club.”

“I don’t think the club of people who’ve gotten handjobs from you could be considered particularly exclusive,” Eddie said.

Richie guffawed with laughter but it slipped away from him quickly and there was no disguising the lost look that took over his face after that.

“Seriously,” Eddie said. “Are you ok?”

“I always figured when they’d died I’d find out after,” Richie said. “That it’d be too late to say anything to them. It always  _ felt  _ too late. And then after that I’d know… I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“I never told this shit to anyone, I don’t know if I ever even really said it to myself. Saying it out loud now is like… Why make it real? It doesn’t fucking matter what I thought, they’re alive and we’re going to see them again. I’m gonna… Fuck.”

He put his hands over his face again, felt Eddie’s fingers pushing into the back of his hair, stroking through the long curls. He leaned his head back into the touch. 

“You haven’t had time to process any of this,” Eddie said. “It’s going to be ok. You don’t have to fix everything right now and whatever happens… I’ll help you out. But feeling fucked up about it isn’t stupid, you got hit with this out of nowhere. Things just take time.”

There was nothing to do but wait, watch the world turning from the window as the terrain below them shifted and the pattern the landscape began to spell out was one baked into Richie’s oldest memories.

* * *

After the flight and the drive up from Boston it was nearly midnight by the time they reached Derry. The decision to stay in Derry had awkwardly fallen into place through asides; Richie didn’t want to stay with his parents, in the house he didn’t know, possibly surrounded by inescapable grief he wasn’t prepared for, and the Kaspbrak house was sitting empty in Eddie’s absence, a short drive from Bangor. It had been a no-brainer, really. Why wouldn’t you stay in your own home?

Sitting in the rental car outside and looking up at the building, Richie felt reluctant to get out. It had been a long day of travelling and every part of him was tirad, but there was nothing inviting about the hollow face of the Kaspbrak house. The porch, empty of life, gaped at him, bleeding long shadows out into the street that hid Eddie’s face as he sat, looking at his home.

“Are you ok?” Richie said.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Eddie said, but there was something restrained in his voice, something distant. He got out of the car.

Revisiting the house for the first time in twenty years had been strange; the house felt even stranger now it was abandoned. The emptiness of it was so strong it was as though they were the intruders and the ghosts of the past were the real occupants, making a home in the quiet corners that formed the backdrops of Richie’s memory. Though it had been changed into Eddie’s adult residence, Richie saw the two versions of the house overlaid on each other and he had to wonder if the loneliness was purely down to the fact no one had lived there for a few weeks or if it was something that was deep in the bones of the Kaspbrak home. 

A lot of the furniture and the decorations were gone, leaving dust marks in the floor and faded shapes on the walls. Clara had clearly packed up her agreed belongings and left, leaving behind only the things Eddie cared about enough to want to cling onto, which wasn’t much. Richie stood in the mostly empty living room, looking at the space where the TV once was and tracing out the history of the room in his mind like an archeologist. Eddie made a guttural noise of revulsion in the kitchen as he found something that had been left too long. 

“Hey,” Richie called out to him. “What do you think your mom would say if she knew we were going to be sleeping in the same bed tonight, under her roof?”

“Uh, yeah, well when I was a teenager I always imagined it would be something along the lines of ‘Eddie how could you let this happen to you’, followed by as many calls as possible to the nearest place that practiced conversion therapy.” Eddie clattered about in the kitchen. “I know that’s not a very fun answer.”

“I’m gonna kiss you,” Richie said, walking to the kitchen. “I’m gonna kiss you in her house and she can’t do a fucking thing about it.”

“Oh, no, dude, I’m gross. I just touched nasty trash.” 

Eddie was standing by the sink and he held up his hands like they were an affront he couldn’t even have near himself when he saw Richie, but Richie took both his wrists and pulled them down, so their arms were around each other. Richie kissed him firmly on the forehead.

“I’m your nasty trash,” Richie said warmly. Eddie snorted with laughter but kissed him on the lips.

“Maybe that could be your drag name. Nastee Trash,” Eddie said.

“God, maybe. I think Sandi and Missy would hate it though.” Richie let Eddie go so he could go and wash his hands very thoroughly. “Hey. Thanks for being cool. About the drag thing.”

“The drag is cool. I think it’s good for you to find what you want to do. I wish I had as much of an idea as what I wanted.”

Richie leaned on the kitchen counter as Eddie dried his hands. The countertops of their youth with the slippery laminate surfaces had been replaced with some kind of smooth stone that Richie wouldn’t be able to name other than to suggest it probably wasn’t marble. There was a thin layer of dust coating it.

“What do you want?” Richie said.

“A lot of things, I don’t know. A Corvette. To run the New York City marathon. A dog. To have less wrinkles in my face.” Eddie dried his hands and looked slightly at a loss for what to do next. He ended up standing next to the fridge with his hands on his hips. “What do you mean?”

“What the fuck do you think I mean? I’m just…” Richie gestures vaguely with his hands. “You have the rest of your life to live. What do you want to do with it?”

Eddie sighed heavily and gave up on hanging out in the kitchen.

“Right now I just want to go to bed. Are you coming?” 

Richie could hear him walk out into the hall, grab the suitcase and drag it up the narrow staircase. It scraped against the wall as he walked and Eddie grumbled low under his breath and then was mostly gone from earshot, vanished up into the master bedroom. Richie had to assume he’d moved to the master bedroom; he couldn’t imagine Eddie and Clara holed up in Eddie’s pokey childhood bedroom, with the little border of trains that ran around the room long after they’d grown out of wanting themed wallpaper, the ancient toys still sitting on the shelves by the window. He peels himself off the counter to go upstairs and find out.

His suspicions are confirmed. When Richie reaches the top of the stairs and opens the door -- first on the right -- he finds that it’s been converted into a home office, though most of the furniture and the computer have gone. A set of filing cabinets against the wall sit open. Eddie’s diploma hangs next to it.  _ Edward Franciszek Kaspbrak has a degree in blah blah blah… _ Richie casts his eyes over the place where Eddie’s childhood bed had once been. He remembers lying under it, waiting for Sonia Kaspbrak to clear out of the way so he could crawl back out and rejoin Eddie on the bed, the night after Ruth had broken up with him.

Now Sonia was gone.

“Looks like I outlived you,” Richie said, but it felt false when he said it. Even though he was certain not a single one of her belongings remained on the property, her spirit hung over the place far more heavily than his own did.

He headed into the master bedroom, where he found Eddie finishing up putting clean sheets on the bed. The room was as bland and featureless as the rest of the house, that particular kind of minimalist home decor that made everything look like an IKEA set and that always made Bev sound depressed when she mentioned it. Mostly everything in the room was white or cool grey. Richie thought it depressed him a little, too. 

He started taking his clothes off without much ceremony, dumping his sweaty shirt and worn pants onto the suitcase on the ground. When he was down to his underwear he noticed Eddie was now leaning on the wall and watching.

“Sorry, should I have put on more of a show?” Richie said.

“Probably not appropriate,” Eddie mused. “I’m going to take a shower.”

Richie thought he should too, just to get the travel stink off him, but he made the fatal mistake of sitting on the bed, which inevitably turned into lying on the bed, and then he was defeated. All the energy he had left drained out of him like someone had ripped out his batteries and by the time Eddie returned, already changed into a neat set of cotton pyjamas that must have been in the house, Richie was half asleep. He woke up enough to crack an eye and peer at Eddie.

“Nice outfit,” he said.

“Thanks, my wife bought it,” Eddie said. 

He climbed under the sheets, tugging at them to quietly demonstrate that he couldn’t get his fair share with Richie lying on top of them. In an incredible show of giving spirit, Richie managed to shift his carcass enough to actually get under the sheets. 

They lay side by side in silence for a few moments, letting the quiet darkness of the house settle over them. Richie found that he couldn’t stop listening out for something, as if he might suddenly hear a creak on the stairs and have to drop to the floor and roll under the bed again. He measured his breathing, reminded himself that he wouldn’t ever have to hide like that again. 

Just to remind himself he could he rolled over, pushed his face into Eddie’s shoulder, curled up against him. Eddie sleepily wrapped his arms around him, protectively curving his body around Richie’s as much as he could. 

“If my mom’s dying,” Richie said, “I might have to stay here a while.”

“That’s ok. I need to sort the house out anyway,” Eddie murmured sleepily, his breath fluttering against the top of Richie’s head.

“I know you don’t want to be back here.”

“Rich. It’s fine. It’s ok. I’m here with you.”

Richie shut his eyes and let Eddie stroke his hair, slipped into a sleep that was disturbed a few times in the night, when he would jerk awake and look out over Eddie’s shoulder at the blue shadows of the room and remind his heartbeat that they were both safe now. The thought of that scared him. 

* * *

Richie had been to Bangor many times as a teenager, but never as an adult, and not really ever in the suburbs. His forays into town had been more around bars and pubs, wherever the college kids congregated. He'd had no reason to loiter around the streets of perfect little American houses, all white clapboard and sweet little fenced porches, their neat parcels of green yards. It was very similar to Derry, but lacked the familiarity that haunted his hometown. It was a nice lie about his history. 

They left for Bangor early in the morning, Richie letting Eddie drive because he felt too tense; instead Eddie tossed him his phone and told him to give him directions to the address Wentworth had provided. Richie knew Eddie didn’t really need it, but it kept his mind occupied, off the anxiety of what they were about to face.

A while ago, Richie had stood in front of his childhood home and recognised it evoked nothing in him. The same could not be said of his parents. His feelings about them did not just  _ go away _ , but remained a tangled mess that wound around his throat and made it hard to breathe. He didn’t know what he wanted to say upon seeing them for the first time.  _ Hello, it’s me, Richie. Turns out you were right about my life being hard and lonely and sad _ . 

Maybe if he had been able to walk in there and say definitively that they were wrong Richie would feel better about returning, but hanging over him was the fact that he had lived the vast majority of his adult life in a sad, lonely prison of his own making. 

_ Hi Mom, hi Dad, I’m the fuck up you always thought I was going to be _ .

“Do you still want to do this?” Eddie said as they pulled up on the sidewalk outside of the small white house that looked a lot like other houses on the block and nothing like any home Richie had lived in before. 

“No,” Richie said, with a laugh. “But what the fuck am I supposed to do? Say ‘have a nice death, Mom, catch you on the other side’?”

Eddie smiled, in a way that was more comforting than amused. After they got out of the car he hugged Richie, wrapping his arms around his shoulders, and Richie found it immediately impossible not to lean in. He was unsure if he would ever grow adjusted to being able to share in Eddie’s warmth; as a teenager he had been far, far too quick to take it for granted.

“Richard?”

Richie looked up at the front porch of his parents’ house, pulling out of Eddie’s hug with some reluctance. Wentworth Tozier was standing at the front door, looking down the path at his son.

“Good lord, Eddie Kaspbrak,” Went said. “I haven’t seen you since you were seventeen,”

Not accurate, but Richie didn’t want the first thing he said to be  _ you’re wrong _ . 

“Sorry to impose,” Eddie said.

“No, don’t be,” Went said. “I’m glad you two are still together.”

He smiled. They all smiled. It felt stiff and unnatural on Richie’s face. 

Went was sixty-eight years old. He had been newly thirty when Richie was born; Richie was older than that now, but not as old as Went had been in 1994, on the eve of when Richie left home. In Richie’s memory, Wentworth was forty-eight, greying rapidly at the temples, wearing the deep creases in his face with increasing resignation to his oncoming age. The transformation into the old man standing in front of them had been gradual but Richie missed it, left to stare into a mirror of what he’d look like in thirty years' time without any chance to adjust. 

“Hey, Dad,” Richie said. What else was there to say?

“Come inside for a minute while I get ready,” Went said. “Loitering on the doorstep like stray cats. What’ll the neighbours think?”

He spoke with good humour but it was easy to tell his heart wasn’t in it. How could it be? Richie’s entire body felt tense with worry.

“You gonna get me one of those collars with a bell so I don’t go running off again this time?” Richie said, talking without really thinking about what he was saying. “Or you could microchip me. You hear all those stories about cats turning up after the owners move cross-country, not a lot about the  _ cats _ moving cross-country and coming back, but maybe there’s a children’s movie in that.”

Wentworth blinked at him and shook his head good-naturedly, looked at Eddie in a way that said  _ our Richie, what is he like?  _ and Richie felt his guts cramp with anxiety. Eddie’s face was blank, his eyes slipping from Went to Richie, monitoring Richie’s reactions like a pressure gauge. They both followed Went inside so he could fetch his shoes and jacket. Richie didn’t really want to hang around the house, but refusing felt impossible. 

The inside of the house was clearly the Toziers’ taste even if it wasn’t Richie’s childhood home. He looked around at the Gary Larson original that his father had hung pride of place in the den in Richie’s childhood and that now sat on the hall wall, at the rose-printed wallpaper that was so definitely his mother’s style. Through the doorway to the living room he could see a bookshelf and could immediately recognise the colours and shapes of books he’d seen on their shelves in Derry, knew he’d find the giant volumes of Peanuts and Addams Family and Calvin & Hobbes strips he used to thumb through with his dad as a kid, knew if he looked further he’d find his mother’s jazz albums, all the stacks and stacks of records she kept, more than he could imagine collecting in a lifetime as a kid. He had missed out on his father growing old, but they were still the same, in that small way that people never really changed. 

Eddie’s hand was on the small of his back. He looked over and Eddie smiled, for a moment.

“You ready to go, boys?” Wentworth said.

“Sure,” Richie said.

Wentworth drove. The BMW sedan of Richie’s childhood was gone, of course, probably rotting at the bottom of some junkheap along with all the cola stains and candy wrappers stuck between the cushions that Richie had left. Went drove old-man slow and careful while Richie fidgeted in the passenger seat, flicking the window up and down, the electric slide of it whirring in the uncomfortable pauses.

“So, how was the flight?” Wentworth said.

“Fine,” Eddie said, when it became clear Richie wasn’t going to answer. “We flew out of LAX.”

“What have you been up to, Eddie?” Wentworth said. “We keep up with Richie’s work, but not all of us can be so privileged to have our jobs broadcast on TV.”

The idea they actually kept up with his work surprised Richie. He didn’t fully believe it; it sounded too much like a nice pleasantry, something friendly to say while your son was in the car. There was no way they watched every episode of  _ The Loudmouth Roadshow _ just for his skits. He dug his nails into the rubberised plastic of the car door.

“Well, I work in finance,” Eddie said. 

“I heard your mother passed.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was a few years back. Cancer.”

“Shame.”

“Was it?” Richie said. “Dad, you hated Sonia Kaspbrak.”

“Richie, that’s not nice.”

“You’re not even denying it! Why even pretend you like her? Everyone hated Sonia, she was a crazy old witch lady.” 

“You’re not even going to ask how your own mother is?” Wentworth said.

Richie lapsed into silence. He couldn’t bring himself to look over at Eddie. If he’d hurt Eddie then he might as well give up now and throw himself out of the car right then, but then again if his dad didn’t start driving over 40 at any point the worst he’d end up with would be a sprained elbow.

“She’s stable,” Went said, answering his own question.

They drove to the hospital in silence. Richie didn’t know what the hell he was going to say to his mother when he saw her; the idea of bridging the gap between all their years now seemed insurmountable. There was no way they would be able to crawl over all the time that came between them to repair the relationship; he was potentially going to face his mother on her deathbed, and they were going to have to accept that their relationship was really damaged beyond repair and he was going to have to leave her there. 

Eddie was by his side the whole time they walked inside. Every now and again he would touch Richie; on the back, by the elbow, a nudge of his hand. Tiny little motions, course correcting him to stop him from tripping over his own feet or to head down the right corridor as Richie’s eyes were glued to his feet gliding over the rubbery lino, or just to remind Richie that he was there. Richie’s breathing was coming in shallow bursts now, and he could feel himself shaking.

“Mr Tozier, just… Can we have a second?” Eddie said, stopping and grabbing Richie’s elbow to hold him in place.

Wentworth stopped, standing a few feet away.

“Alright,” he said, frowning for a second, just a brief second before he tried a stiff smile again. “Her room is just right here, when you’re ready.”

He pointed to a door a little further up the hall and Eddie gave a polite nod, his hand warm against the cool leather of Richie’s jacket. He didn’t let go as he turned back to Richie, his heavy brows furrowed in concern. Richie found it hard to look directly at Eddie, his eyes wanting to slip away from the intensity of his stare.

“Are you ok?” Eddie said, voice low.

“Yeah,” Richie said. “Sorry I went off about your mom like that, that wasn’t cool.”

“No, it wasn’t. You weren’t wrong, but it still wasn’t cool. I can forgive you this time, though,” Eddie said. “Are you actually alright?”

“No,” Richie said. He finally let himself look at Eddie and found the stare so piercing it cut right through him. “What the hell am I meant to go in there and say? Hi Mom. Sorry I fucked off for twenty years but I’m back now, hope you have a good death?”

“It’s going to be ok, Richie. Whatever happens… You have a family. You know that, right?”

Richie nodded, then exhaled, leaning forwards. Eddie came up to meet him, their foreheads touching for a moment. He breathed in, smelling the aftershave that clung to Eddie’s skin over the harsh chemicals of the hospital. He wanted nothing more to go back to the morning with Eddie waking up in his arms, to bury his head in the crook of his neck and breathe in the scent of his skin. But he reminded himself that would still be there after this. Whatever happened now, he would be able to go home to Eddie’s arms.

“Yeah. I know.”

Richie wanted to kiss him. He didn’t.

He turned back to see his father still standing by the room his mother was in. There was a silence as Wentworth built up to speaking. He had dark eyes, compared to Richie’s blue. It was one of the few things Richie had gotten from his mother. 

“You know,” Wentworth said. “She thought you would come back. Even after we moved to Bangor she’d say ‘one day he’ll be back’. Thought the money would run out, or you’d get tired of the life, get homesick. Something. I wasn’t too sure, but your mother was convinced that you’d end up back home. One day, I think it was in 1998, we get a call from Mrs Pike. You know, you used to live down the street from us, in Derry? And she says ‘I just saw your Richie on a commercial on television’. And Maggie said no, couldn’t be him. Had to be a mistake. Couple of days later we saw the commercial ourselves. There you were, making some joke about fruit juice, first time we’d seen a picture of you in four years. I said to Maggie look, there you go, he’s made it. She said one job isn’t a career, he’ll be back home.”

Richie could imagine it, that strained, annoyed look on his mother’s face, the way she would let her mouth go tight and the crease she’d get between her eyebrows, looking at twenty-two year old him in some commercial and saying  _ no, he’ll fuck it up _ .

“I’m so touched that she always believed in me,” Richie said. His throat and mouth were dry. Behind his back, Eddie clutched his hand.

“Then we get another call, ‘hey, saw your Richie on a sitcom’, ‘saw your Richie in a commercial’. Little things. Saw you ourselves in a movie one day. You only had a couple lines, but you were in it.” Wentworth sighed. “After that, Maggie just says ‘he really did it’.”

“What are you telling me, Dad? She thought I was a fuck-up? She spent years waiting for her chance to say ‘I told you so’?” 

“No, Rich. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in you, it’s that she was scared for you. She knew you were brilliant, we both did. But being brilliant wasn’t ever going to be enough, not by itself. She thought you’d know that if it ever got too hard, you could come back home.”

At that moment Richie wondered if his parents had ever known who he was. 

“When was the last time I asked either of you for help?” He said.

Wentworth shrugged, opened the door, and stepped into the room. Eddie squeezed his hand. Richie took a breath before he followed his father into his mother’s room, letting Eddie follow him, their hands slipping apart at the last second, before anyone could see. 

It was a shared room, but the other bed was unoccupied, just a white sheet over a bare mattress. Maggie Tozier was sitting in bed watching as they came inside, the little table next to her piled with  _ Get Well Soon! _ cards and thoughtful little gifts of fruit or flowers. Her hair, once black and long past her shoulders, was steely grey and shot through with white. She had it tied up but it was barely any longer than Richie’s was, the two of them having almost matching ponytails. She made a small noise when she saw him, something like a sigh, the sides of her mouth tense. 

“Hi, Mom,” Richie said.

“I told your father not to make a fuss,” she said. “It’s only a broken hip.”

“What?” Richie said. “Jesus Christ, Dad, I thought she was fucking dying.”

“I never said that!” Went said, the same defensive pang in his voice that Richie always got. 

“You call me up, say Mom’s sick, I thought I was gonna find out she had inoperable brain cancer or something. Jesus Christ, Dad. You could have filled me in a  _ little _ .”

“Went,” Maggie said, scoldingly, before she looked at Richie again. “I just have to have a little operation. They have to put a pin in. It’s very routine. I said not to make a fuss.”

She looked at him, all of him, the tall, blocky man that her gangly teenage son had morphed into. She knew what he looked like, of course. She would have been able to look him up whenever she wanted. He wondered if she would have tried to get in touch if she’d known he was ‘in trouble’.

“You didn’t have to fly all the way out,” she said. 

“Well, I already did. Might as well make the most of it,” Richie said. 

He grabbed a chair from the back of the room and pulled it up, wincing when the feet whined on the lino, sitting at the foot of the bed. Eddie hovered in the doorway, clearly unsure of where he should be.

“Is that Eddie Kaspbrak?” Maggie said. “Vey iz mir, is the whole of your little gang here?”

“No, Ma, it’s just Eddie.”

“Hi, Mrs Tozier.”

“Don’t be so formal now, you’re a grown man. I thought the two of you weren’t talking anymore.”

“We got back in touch,” Eddie said. His hand almost came to rest on Richie’s shoulder but then flinched away at the last second.

“That’s good. You two were always so close. Felt like a shame you went through all your childhood fights and scuffles only to drift apart.” 

Eddie gave her a tight smile and said nothing. Richie’s hands were folded in his lap, fidgeting restlessly. The constant motion didn’t make him feel better, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. The silence in the room was immediately awful and suffocating. Richie felt like if someone didn’t speak immediately his head was going to pop like a balloon, too full of things he wanted to spit out, the pressure of the unsaid things building internally. He bit down on the inside of his lip, not wanting to say something he would regret even while the years of unsaid things weighed on him heavily.

“What happened?” Richie said.

“Ah. It was nothing. Back porch step broke, I fell badly. Just rotten luck,” Maggie said. “Only issue is the way the bone broke.”

Richie nodded dumbly. Eddie probably knew more about this shit than he did, but Eddie was playing it quiet, his presence clearly intended as a security blanket, not a member of the family. Though he  _ was  _ Richie’s family, just in a different way. 

“All these years. I should have thought of something witty to say,” Maggie said. 

“Don’t ask me to tell a joke,” Richie said.

“Charge too much for us now, probably,” Wentworth said. “Don’t know if my pension could stretch to a private show.”

“We saw your show. The one you left,” Maggie said.

“Yeah? You think it was good? You like it?” There was an immediate edge of bitterness in Richie’s voice, though he tried to keep his tone measured.

“Sometimes. Not sure we were really the audience it had in mind.”

“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t write any of it. It was never my show. I was playing a part.” He could hear how hostile his voice was already and he struggled to get it back under control. The pressure in him was only building, things coming out in jets of anger even as he tried to reel it back. His father’s eyes witnessed him struggling and he didn’t like the reflection he saw in them.

“We saw you came out,” Maggie said. “It was in the news.”

“Sorry. That must have been embarrassing for you,” Richie said.

“I always thought you would have done it sooner. I didn’t realise people didn’t know,” Went said. “Just thought you were being private.”

“Well, someone told me once that if I was gay life would be a lot harder for me.”

He was so tense his teeth were clenching painfully. He kept looking at the floor, like there was some safety in the flecked pattern of the tiles. He could only look up in glances, eyes darting between his parents’ gazes, the burden of eye contact turning his stomach. 

“I was wondering when you’d bring that up,” Maggie said.

“It’s been on my mind a lot the last twenty years,” Richie said. 

“We never wanted you to feel like…” Wentworth searched for the words. “We were just scared for you.”

“I didn’t want you to be scared for me. I wanted you to tell me everything was going to be ok. You’re my parents, you weren’t supposed to be telling me you were afraid.  _ I  _ was supposed to be scared. You were meant to pretend you knew everything and say you were there for me… I was a kid, I shouldn’t have been worrying about  _ you _ .”

“When were you  _ ever  _ worried about us?” Maggie said. “You made it very clear that you had a plan for your life and we weren’t going to be a part of it. Last couple of years you were with us you wanted us to stand back and watch and not say a thing. You never cared a bit what we thought, because we were just… An unfortunate part of your history that you were going to leave behind. You didn’t give a damn about anything you were leaving behind! Even your friends, and I thought for a while they were the only thing in the world you did care about, other than yourself.”

She sighed heavily, smoothing the already neat sheets with her hand.

“We did a lot wrong by you, Richard, but don’t pretend you were suffering worrying about what we would think. You wrote us off a long time ago,” she said.

“I had to stop worrying about what you’d think because I knew you didn’t like anything I was.”

“We always loved you.”

“That’s not what I said. I was never the kid you wanted. You wanted a daughter who did good in school and went to college and became a fuckin’ doctor or something, but you got me, and you always resented that. I always knew I was the booby prize, and I had to accept that and move on with my life or I would have ended up going nuts. More nuts.”

He swallowed hard and tried to resist the urge in his body to flip the chair, storm out of the room, run away. He managed to raise his head enough to look his mother in the eye. Eddie’s hand was on his shoulder, tight against the leather of his jacket. There was a lump in his throat that he couldn’t swallow around, that made him feel like the air wasn’t coming quick enough.

Somewhere else in the hospital a monitor shrieked and the noise made Richie flinch.

“You always made yourself a very difficult person to love,” Maggie said.

The words hurt. Richie thought in a way they must be true -- if he was easy to love then he wouldn’t have been so alone for so long. If he was a loveable person, he would have been loved all these years, not stewing on his own the way he had been. But regardless, it hurt to hear that, the same way it hurt to acknowledge that he  _ had  _ been alone, just like how they’d predicted. 

“Loving Richie was the easiest thing in the world for me, actually,” Eddie said. His tone was calm but there was a whip crack of defensiveness to it. It was a tone that said  _ say that again in front of me _ . “It was everyone else who wanted to make it difficult.”

“I just meant…” Maggie said. “You had all these defenses around you, like you were locking yourself in a cage. You didn’t want anyone to get close.”

“Dad said you were waiting for years to see if I’d come back,” Richie said.

Maggie looked at Went somewhat reproachfully, like he’d leaked something secret she hadn’t wanted to let out. He just shrugged again, a little gesture of  _ well, what can you do _ ? 

“I suppose I was,” she sighed.

Picket fence. Telling Eddie they would never be anything, that they had no future because he knew Eddie’s future. Two point five kids who never got to be.

“I think me and you have the same problem,” Richie said, “of thinking we know how something’s gonna go and then giving up until it does.”

Maggie nodded. He didn’t think he’d have gotten away with saying something like that when he was eighteen, but at thirty-eight he had a little more authority to speak. It was a shame that they couldn’t have done this sooner but God, if he got stuck falling down the rabbit hole of _ what might have been _ he’d be there all day. He jumped off that train of thought before it had a chance to leave the station.

“If you wanted to know me you needed to come to me,” Richie said. “At least a little. At least tried.”

He waited because he wasn’t sure if they were going to argue with him or not. If they did he thought he would leave. Just get up and walk out of the door. He’d done it once and he was prepared to do it again. With Eddie right behind him it wouldn’t be half as hard this time. 

“When you came out I was so proud,” Went said. 

“Thanks, Dad.”

“I mean it. I think you’re one of the most remarkably brave people I’ve ever met. And it would be a failure on my part if I didn’t actually get to know you.” 

Richie swallowed. The adrenaline of his anger had gone and he felt more fragile now, when faced with the possibility of acceptance. Maggie reached for him, unable to get out of bed but still leaning as far as she could towards him. He met her halfway, taking her hand in his. 

“We did wrong by you,” Maggie said. “And we’re sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t take back what I said, not ever, but I would like… If you’d like us to know you better, then I’d like to try.”

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” Richie said. 

“We can start over. Something like starting over, at least. Because I am… I am sorry. And I do wish that it had been different. That I’d told you I knew you’d be brilliant, because you always were. I was just too afraid of the world, that it would crush that brilliance out of you and I wouldn’t be able to protect you. But I should have known that you’d be stronger than that, and I wish I’d said so. I wish I’d said that I knew you’d be loved.”

“I always was,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder to look at Eddie 

And whatever happened, he always would be. No one could take that away from him; he would not allow it. He was struck again with the memory of the impossibly vast darkness that lay between the stars and the numbing fear he had felt as a teenager that the void would never be ‘satisfied’, that he would never be able to muffle the yearning for Eddie, to be loved, to be held and to be understood. At the time it had seemed like it was asking too much of everyone, to ask them to try and exist in a vacuum that would only ever ask for more, but sitting in the uncomfortable plasticky chair in the hospital room, with its cleaning fluid smell and the sickly warmth that radiated from the floors, he thought of the picture of him and Eddie falling from the cliff with their hands grasping for each other, two star-like bursts of light in the vast expanse of bare rock tumbling in free fall towards the water. They had found each other and clung on as they fell, both through the air and through the years, holding onto the memory of each other even when time should have eaten through their bonds. Stars changed form and grew vast before they burned out, just as the two of them had grown up over the years, no longer the tiny sparks of potential they had been as children, but space never changed. The love between them had never changed. 

All those lost relationships over the years; he could accept nothing less because he knew what love was. He knew Eddie. Eddie knew him. Eddie had seen the emptiness and the void and Richie’s reaching hand across it and reached back. And he stood by Richie’s side and said that it was no effort at all. 

“I can’t believe you came all the way out from LA just for a little break,” Maggie said, patting his hand.

“I only have one mom. If you broke I can’t replace you,” Richie said.

“And you dragged Eddie out here too. Eddie, last I heard you were still living in Derry. Working for the bank?”

“I was,” Eddie said. “But the plan was always to run away with Richie.”

“You kids and your little schemes,” Wentworth said, admiringly. “You two always knew what you wanted. I always envied that. Just knowing what you wanted out of life and going for it.”

* * *

Richie drove them back to Derry. They stopped to buy groceries, Eddie’s favourite form of micromanagement, enough for a week or so. Richie considered how living off takeout was a hell of a lot less viable here and idly missed the Whole Foods he used to haunt, but he didn’t know if that was homesickness as much as it was resentment that Derry just had less to offer him. Driving back to the Kaspbrak house Richie considered how funny it was the dynamic had flipped; now he was the one with a suitcase of not enough clothing and the constant air that he might leave at a moment’s notice. He didn’t verbalise this to Eddie, who clearly didn’t want to be back in Derry at all.

“Look, I know my mom is ok, but I want to hang around a while,” Richie said. “I think… It would be good to be nearby while she recovers. And I could help with the house.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, thoughtfully. 

“I know you don’t want to be in Derry.”

“It’s fine, Rich, you don’t need to keep apologising for it. I’m happy to…” 

Eddie’s voice trailed off as they began to draw up outside 

“What the fuck?” Eddie said. Richie parked quickly and untidily on the drive and Eddie jumped out of the car almost before it had stopped, racing into the house, Richie chasing after him. 

Inside were Clara, a middle-aged cop with thinning blond hair who Richie didn’t know, and Henry Bowers. All three of them were on their feet, and Bowers’ hand had gone straight to his gun. It was clear they hadn’t known who was charging inside. 

“What’s going on?” Eddie said, verging on shouting. 

“What did… Did you move back in?” Clara said, everything about her face and tone spelling out the fact she had  _ not  _ expected Eddie to return, possibly ever. She looked at Richie with complete incomprehension; it was less like her ex-husband’s friend had walked in and more like she’d seen Santa Claus walk out on stage during a production of Hamlet, just a total lack of ability to understand why he was there. 

“I never moved out!” Eddie said. “Why are the cops here? What the hell is going on?”

“You ran away to Los Angeles, I didn’t think you were ever coming back! Wendy next door said she saw a strange man in the house, I thought someone had broken in. You never told me you were coming back,” Clara said. “You didn’t even tell me you were  _ leaving _ .”

“Ma’am, can you explain what’s going on?” The blond officer asked.

Bowers had moved to having his arms crossed over his chest but was grinning now, open-mouthed, teeth showing, a threat of a smile as he watched the drama with hateful little eyes that made Richie’s skin crawl. The other cop just looked bored, drumming his notepad against his leg in irritation.

“This is my house,” Eddie said. “I have the right to be in here.”

“You  _ left _ ,” Clara snapped. “You  _ vanished _ in the middle of the day and I found out from  _ Bill Denbrough _ who found out from  _ him _ a day later that you were even alive. You didn’t even bother to call me.”

The ‘him’ was punctuated with a violent accusatory stab towards Richie. Richie wondered if he could be considered a homewrecker, or if the home had already been too thoroughly destroyed by the time he reentered the picture.

“Ma’am…” Blond officer said again.

“No, it’s ok,” Bowers interrupted. “This is Ed Kaspbrak. He’s the homeowner. Mrs Kaspbrak was just confused, on account of the fact Mr Kaspbrak fled the state. But there’s no  _ criminal _ issue here.”

“Is that true?” The blond cop said.

“Yes,” Clara said. “Yes, this is my ex-husband. I didn’t realise he was in town again. You can… You can go.”

“Alright, well. Next time try calling your ex to check he’s not back in town  _ before _ you call the police,” the blond officer said, sounding thoroughly fucking exhausted. Clara stared daggers at him, but he paid no attention, just squeezed out of the doorway past Eddie and Richie, walking to the patrol car parked outside.

Bowers sauntered after him but stopped in front of Eddie, leaning in, talking low. Richie could only just catch what he was saying. Eddie’s face screwed up like someone had wafted something foul underneath his nose.

“When you went missing your old lady called us and I said well boys, better go dredging the river. Saw this one coming,” he said, his voice soft and dangerous as a poison in still waters. “Can’t say I was real surprised when we found out you’d left town to go chasing your old-”

“Shut the fuck up, Bowers,” Richie interrupted.

Henry turned his head to look at him very slowly.

“That how you talk to an officer of the law?” He said, drawing the words out slow. 

“It’s how I talk to pathetic bullies who chose their career because the only way they can feel good is picking on people who can’t fight back,” Richie said.

“You think you’d be able to fight me, Tozier?” Bowers’ eyes were glinting with something dark and threatening. 

“You think I’m going to answer that and end up in jail for threatening an officer? I’m not quite as stupid as you’d like.”

Bowers laughed unpleasantly. “Typical pussy response.”

“If there’s nothing else I’d like you to leave my home, officer,” Eddie said, voice loud and clear.

“What’s wrong?” Clara said, a touch nervously. Both Eddie and Richie glanced at her, and maybe the resentment on Richie’s face was a little too clear, because she threw him back the filthiest look he’d ever seen.

“Nothing, Mrs Kaspbrak, I’m just catching up with some old school friends,” Bowers said. “Have a good night now.”

He walked out of the house then, swaggering as if he’d accomplished something of value with his night. Eddie followed him to the door and watched, protectively, as the car drove away. This left Richie in the front room with Clara.

“Why would you call the cops?” Richie said.

“I’m not interested in talking to you,” she said.

“Jesus. Alright. I haven’t done anything to you.”

“All I know is that the second you walked back into Eddie’s life everything we’d been working on for months was over and he vanished without saying a word. From where I’m standing… I have no idea what you did, but I feel like my husband got stolen by a cult.” 

“ _ What? _ ” 

“What am I supposed to think?”

Richie didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry. He stood in the room smiling just from the absurdity of it.

“That’s what you think happened?” Eddie said, emerging behind Richie.

“I don’t know what to think,” Clara said. “You never told me.”

The air in the room was terrible, fouled by the argument. Richie wanted so badly not to be there. 

“I have to put away groceries,” Eddie said. What he meant was  _ I have a life to get back to, and you’re not invited _ . Richie tensed his jaw so tightly it hurt.

“Fine. I’m very sorry for not intuiting this was the one thing you hadn’t abandoned without warning. I should have somehow guessed from the wall of silence and the missed calls that you actually planned to come back.” She walked to the door out of the living room and stared Richie down until he moved aside to let her pass; he slunk deeper into the house. 

She left without saying anything more. Eddie ran his fingers through his hair, sighing gutterly. 

“I need to tell her everything,” he said. “I owe her that.”

“Do you?” Richie said.

“Yeah, man. We were married for ten years, I can’t… Not. I’m not in love with her, I don’t really like her, as a person but she doesn’t… I can’t just treat her like trash. I can’t just vanish out of her life. I have a level of responsibility.” 

“She thinks vaccines cause autism and made you stop taking your antidepressants.”

“Can you stop?”

“Sorry.”

The conversation lapsed into silence as they fetched the groceries, took them out to the kitchen. It felt a little less like they were squatting when they had the commitment of a bag of mixed greens they had to eat within the next few days, but Richie absolutely didn’t feel welcome or at home. Sonia Kaspbrak’s ghost seethed in the quiet corners when Richie’s mind wandered.

“I’m glad your mom is ok,” Eddie said, eventually, opening the fridge to start putting away things.

“Me too.”

“The fact I waited for my mom to die always felt like such a copout to me. I got away from her for one minute and then slowly I let her take over my life again and  _ then _ after she  _ died _ … I got married. Before she died I was trying to figure out how to tell Clara it was over but it was when I had that thought? That I was safe? As soon as I thought that I ran away from it.” Eddie slammed the door of the fridge so hard it shook. His anger made him huge suddenly, bigger than his body. “It’s just funny your dad thought that we had our shit together, or could go after what we want, because I never have. I’ve never done that. And now I’m…”

The fury faded out of him and then he seemed small, smaller than usual, brittle. 

“Now I’m so… Buried in this, I don’t know how much of me is left.” He scrubbed his eyes, tired. “I’m sorry. That was dramatic.”

Richie stood there and didn’t know what to do so he just opened up his arms wide. Eddie slumped against his chest like the anger vanishing had sapped his energy and he needed the support. Richie rubbed his back in small circles. It felt woefully fucking inadequate.

“You don’t have to know anything now,” Richie said. “And you don’t have to know it all at once. I didn’t figure out I liked drag until like, last month.”

He kissed Eddie on the forehead because he liked to and he thought it was cute. Eddie pushed his face against Richie’s chest harder.

“You aren't just figuring out one side of yourself,” Richie said.

“Oh my God,” Eddie said, voice muffled. Then, a moment later. “Your parents definitely think we’re dating.”

“Aren’t we?” Richie said.

“No. We never talked about it.”

Richie put his hands on Eddie’s shoulders, pulled him back. Eddie had a slightly sleepily annoyed look on his face, like he’d been suddenly woken up.

“Do you not want to date me?” Richie said.

“I didn’t say that,” Eddie said. “I said we never talked about it.”

“Are we going to talk about it?” Richie said. 

“I hope so.”


	20. 1994-2016: An Intermission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for some expressions of suicidal ideation.

### 1994 - May

The night Richie left Mike insisted on driving Eddie home, watching him out of the corner of his eye the entire time even though Eddie had nothing to say and could only sit staring dumbly out of the window. He reached out for Eddie when they stopped outside the Kaspbrak house, but Eddie flinched away from the contact.

“It’s gonna be ok,” Mike said.

Eddie thought _ Do you know about us? _ but he couldn’t bring himself to ask and it didn’t bring any comfort, anyway. That had always been Richie’s fear, that secretly everyone knew, the humiliation of carrying on the charade for his sake while they were laughing behind his back. As for Eddie… 

He didn’t know what he wanted. He had been coasting on Richie’s dream for the last year or so and now he was stranded, no options left. He didn’t know what _ he _ wanted. 

Mike stayed idling on the sidewalk as Eddie walked to his house, like he was scared that Eddie would suddenly fall if he didn’t have someone to support him and shatter on the concrete path like a dropped vase. Irrationally, Eddie wanted to scream at him, tell him to back off. He wanted to be left alone, maybe forever. For obvious reasons he did not yell, only bit back on his anger and let himself into his house.

Inside there was the usual noise. His mother couldn’t stand a quiet house; the TV always ran, often the radio would be chattering away at the same time in another room, trying to fill up the small space with as much noise as possible. He hesitated in the hallway, debating if he’d be able to run the short distance up the stairs to his room without being overheard. No such luck; his mother was walking down the stairs, summoned by the sound of the door opening, looking at him with pinched concern on her face. Part of him wanted to run right back out the front door, but there was another part, an overwhelming part, that didn’t care if eighteen meant he was a grown-up and he was supposed to be an independent young man now. 

“Mommy,” said that part of him with a sob, feeling his eyes welling up as the other part of him violently, angrily raged at him for giving in, for responding to all this with sadness and not with fury. 

Sonia rushed to him, fear swelling inside her like a wave, arms open to hug him. The angry part of him told him he should be screaming, should be beating the walls with his fists. The monster in his chest roared in futile anger as he collapsed into his mother's arms and sobbed helplessly against her as she shushed him and stroked his hair. He was five again, he was ten, he was a baby. He had fallen and scratched his knee on the playground. It was the night after Richie had told him they were nothing and they had both cried like newborn infants, terrified of a world they didn't understand. He cried so hard he could barely breathe, taking huge gulps of air and choking on them. 

He was steered into the living room and sat on the couch, where Sonia rubbed his back in small, comforting circles and he tried to stop himself from hyperventilating. She calmed him enough to pass him his inhaler, pleading with him to use it. He did, of course, sucking in the thin air and noting, bitterly, that his breathing did even out. Enough that when his mother asked, for the fifth or sixth time, what was wrong he was able to choke out:

"Richie's gone."

Sonia's face changed instantly. All her features smoothed out, the terror in her eyes gone the minute she realised the issue was not that _ Eddie _was in mortal peril. Her face was calm, almost impassive.

"What do you mean?" She said. "Gone where?"

"California," Eddie said, looking at her through the mist of tears sticking to his eyelashes. "He's gone and he's never coming back."

"Oh," she said. "Well. People move away after school ends."

Eddie felt sick. His face hurt from crying, his breathing came in rattling sobs as his chest heaved. He looked at his mother and he begged, silently, for her to understand. 

"He's my best friend," Eddie said. "And he left me behind."

Sonia patted him on the head and forced a look of sympathy. He could see that her dark eyes were blank, though. They were focused on him, but there was no sympathy in them, no real understanding. 

"You'll always have me, sweetie," she said. "I'm your best friend."

It was normal for children to, at some point, say they hated their parents. Bill, Stan, and Richie had all, some time or another throughout their teenage years, rolled their eyes in their skull and sighed and said they hated their parents, hated the indignity of not being allowed to do what they wanted, forced to go on vacation, given boring tasks. None of them meant it; though Richie's words had gradually twisted towards genuine resentfulness over the years, he wanted their approval too much to mean it _ completely _, in the complicated way you could both love and be furiously betrayed by someone. Mike had not ever said he hated his parents, for obvious reasons, but he had grouched about his grandparents just as often. Even Ben, who was closer with his mother than any of the others were with their parents, had one particularly moody afternoon exclaimed he hated his mom for putting so much responsibility on his shoulders, though he didn't mean it. He was just a kid, stressed and tired and scared about the future, same as them all. 

One winter day in 1992, Eddie, Bev, and Ben had sat in Ben's yard, the fine drizzle of snow not enough to convince them to go back inside, sitting on the bench that Ben had helped make himself. There had been a strange mood hanging over the day, with four of their number out of town and the three of them feeling all, in some way, alone in the grey and white world that Derry was becoming as the snow fell. It was there that Ben quietly admitted that sometimes he hated his dad for dying. For leaving. For dying in a war that Ben was now about old enough to form his own opinions on, primarily that it was pointless, if not evil.

"I hate my dad," Beverly had said. Her voice had been calm, and the honesty of it had been obvious and terrifying in its simple power. The snow had clung to her short red hair and Eddie saw the hatred, the anger, in the set of her jaw and her eyes turned to sea glass. It had struck a chord deep in Eddie's core, but he had not said anything.

He had never said he hated his mother. He couldn't. It was not allowed of him and he didn't push the boundary set in his mind. He loved his mommy, told her that every day, so many times a day, had done so for his entire life. It was the only thing he had ever known and allowing himself to think otherwise was impossible. 

At that moment, as she told him to stop crying for Richie, Eddie hated his mother. 

### 1998 - August

Eddie started applying for jobs as soon as he started his final semester of college. He had months before he would be able to start anywhere, but he wanted to be secure in where he was going. He had worked himself into the ground for his grades, to make up for the time he had to miss when he was out because his mother told him he had to be out. He was not the top student in his class, but his work ethic was admirable. His professors were happy to give him letters of recommendation; he had earned them.

He wanted to leave Derry. He had lingered for a while over jobs in California, but not applied to any in the end. It felt too improbable, and the stakes were too high. He had no reason to go there, and if he got fired or burned out he would be entirely alone. It was not, after all, like he knew anyone in California. 

He ended up in Boston. It was close enough that he could come back and visit his friends, far enough that he could live on his own. Twenty-two years old, and Eddie was finally leaving home. He moved in with the brother of a guy he went to college with, a young accountant a couple of years older than him who kept to his own space and was polite but distant, and didn't leave hairs in the shower drain. 

His mother called sobbing the first week he moved out. At one point his roommate, Alex, answered the phone and Eddie watched, with shame pooling in his belly, the way his eyes flicked over to Eddie, face screwed up in distaste. There was something so horribly embarrassing about his mother, about the noise and the melodrama, about the way she tried to bend the entire world to her whim. _ She _felt no shame for it, didn't have an issue with calling her adult son and crying into his ear at all hours of the night. so the embarrassment was Eddie's alone to bear. 

"You left me," she said. "I can't manage with you so far."

_ I hate her, _ he reminded himself as he stood in the kitchen, coiling the phone wire around his finger. Something about the reminder calmed him. 

"I can visit on the weekend," he said. His own voice was low, measured. Alex would not hear it over the television as he sat in the living room a few feet away. 

"I don't want you to visit!" She pleaded. "I want you to stay! I'm old, Eddie. Who's going to look after me when I'm sick?" 

"I will." He desperately hoped he wouldn’t. He closed his eyes and imagined that he was in New York, he was in LA, he was in Texas. He was on the other side of the country and she would die so suddenly he would just be suddenly cut adrift. A clean break and then he would be free to fall through the air alone.

Even in his fantasies his chest clutched with anxiety. 

"No you won't. You'll be too far away and too busy. You're going to leave me to die alone. You don't care about me."

"No, I won't. Ma. I promise."

She snivelled and cried, her tears soft and her voice mean, until he made an excuse and hung up. 

Afterwards he stood in the kitchen and breathed slowly, looking at the things around him. Four walls (yellow). The kitchen countertops (plastic laminate, fake wood). The fridge with the cleaning rota stuck to it (he needed to mop the floors). The calendar from Alex's work (Scandinavian landscapes). Eventually the pulse in his head stopped hammering and his hands stopped shaking enough that he allowed himself to leave the kitchen and walk into the living room, where Alex was watching _ Escape from LA _. Snake Plissken's dubbed voice awkwardly talked around the swear words. 

"This isn't as good as the first one," Alex said. 

It cut to commercial and Eddie flopped in an armchair and watched disinterestedly as a local company tried to sell him a boat. 

"I think _ The Thing _ is underrated," Alex said. 

"I liked _The Terminator 2_," Eddie said. 

"That was Cameron."

"What?" 

"_Terminator _ was Cameron. _ The Thing _ was Carpenter."

"Are you sure?"

Alex continued to talk but the commercial had switched from dog food to orange juice. A woman cracked a joke and slid a glass of juice across the table to her boyfriend.

Her boyfriend was Richie. 

Eddie froze in his seat. He hadn't seen Richie since he was eighteen, and now there Richie was, on the screen, just walking into the room as if someone had hit the play button and resumed his life. He had changed massively in the last few years; as a teen he had been growing so fast his body hadn't been able to keep up, bony-faced and scrawny, but now he had started to settle into his skin. He had stubble and short hair and wasn't wearing his glasses, but that might have just been for the commercial's sake. Eddie didn’t know. He didn’t get to know what Richie was like in his daily life anymore. 

In the commercial the juice gave him the energy to have a great day and brighten up his office job. Eddie could not imagine Richie in an office. On screen, Richie winked at the camera. Eddie bit the inside of his cheek. 

"What?" Alex said, flummoxed at his expression, his vast eyes and slack jaw.

"That guy was like…" Eddie tried to find words to explain to someone who didn’t know Richie what Richie had been to him. "My best friend in middle school."

"Oh, really?" Alex said, with mild curiosity. "That's wild. He’s an actor?"

"I guess so. He moved out to LA after high school."

"You still talk?" 

The commercial ended and a cartoon bear started running around with toilet paper. Eddie got out of his seat.

"No," he said. “We drifted apart.”

### 2001 - December

"You're always at home for Christmas anyway," Bill said on the phone. "It won't be that much of a difference at first."

“That’s bullshit,” Eddie said. He had the phone wedged under his chin as he packed up his apartment into boxes. He had to sell most of his furniture, had whittled it down to the bare necessities that would fit 

Bill made a noncommittal noise.

“It’ll be good having you closer,” he said. 

Bill had moved to Portland with Mike for a year and then Mike had decided he wanted to go travelling, and he’d ended up going back home to his parents for a few months before moving in with some roommates in Bangor. There was a freedom to it, a lack of commitment, an impulsivity, that Eddie envied. Bill was training to be a teacher now, in a last-minute career shift that Eddie knew immediately would stick. He was still writing, but the amount of people who managed to make careers from their writing was slim to none, and Bill didn’t like the pressure of having to rely on his artistic pursuits. The job made sense, and he liked it. Eddie was going to work at an insurance firm in Bangor. He felt nothing about it. He thought about the upwards mobility he was losing and the amount of money he could make in a similar position in New York the same way as he thought about the idea of spending his Christmases with a father who loved him. 

Maybe from the sheer force of wanting it so badly, Eddie’s mother had been diagnosed with cancer. He had gone to visit her in the hospital immediately and she had told him that she definitely needed him closer now, to help. It had been impossible for him to ignore the smug satisfaction in her voice when he had agreed, but he had just smoothed her hair out of her face and kissed her pale cheek. 

He was staying in her house again. She kept saying he was coming home. He couldn’t use the words himself, the terminology of _ house _ and _ home _ twisting his tongue. He was only staying there until he could get his own place, he said, over and over, and she smiled knowingly at him in a way that let him know she wasn’t listening. 

“Stan says Richie’s in a movie,” Bill said. “Like, he only has a couple of lines, but he’s in a movie.”

“I don’t care,” Eddie said. “What movie?”

“Uh, I forgot. Some comedy.”

“Good for him.”

Bill switched tack and started talking about the fact Ben was coming back for Christmas the same time Eddie was, so they could have a party. Eddie taped the box closed. He wondered if the box in the clubhouse was still there. He hoped it wasn’t. 

He did not go and see any comedy films for several months. He did not work out what film it was and the others didn’t bring it up again. 

### 2004 - April

There was one health food store in Derry. It was run by an old hippy who Eddie didn’t like touching his food because he always had dirt under his fingernails, but it would sell him organic lentils, so he coped. He would go in there on his lunch breaks sometimes just to get out of the bank that now employed him, drifting around the aisles picking out grainy bread that weighed down his bag, overpriced muesli, the tough jerky-like dried fruit he thought was a healthy snacking alternative. The aisles were all carpeted in thin, scratchy material that felt gritty under Eddie’s shoes as he walked. The lighting was always too dim and whined over his head, flickering in a way that made it painful to look at for too long. He had spotted himself in a mirror they had hanging behind the counter and been shocked at how sickly he looked under the lights, the dark rings under his eyes, the yellow tone his skin took on, enough that he’d inspected himself in the bathroom for a long time when he’d gotten back into the office, trying to work out if he looked as bad as that all the time. He had come away uncertain.

That day the usual manager was there. She was a fit, athletic looking woman with long brown hair she wore in a tight bun and who had talked to him very professionally about some herbal supplements and their benefits, enough to convince him to buy them. Bill had laughed when he’d seen them sitting on Eddie’s shelf, but Eddie appreciated the way she talked like a businesswoman and not a health guru. It all felt very factual, the data behind it, and he was comforted by that. 

It also meant he could stop taking some of the clinical, prescribed medicines he’d been taking for years, and throwing away the bottle of sleep medication he _ had _been on put a sense of peace in his chest that was alarming to him. Though, he had ended up scooping the bottle out of the trash and refilling it with the new herbal pills instead after his mother had seen the bottle in the garbage and freaked out about Eddie not taking his medicine on time, not looking after himself. It was easy to lie and tell her the pills were real. She took the placebos he offered her.

The manager’s name was Clara. She had started to notice Eddie coming in frequently. They talked more when he stopped by the checkout. Sometimes she would squeeze in past whoever was manning it so she could serve him instead. He liked that she went to that effort, that she wanted to talk to him. He liked feeling wanted.

“Ask her on a date!” Mike said one night, when they were getting dinner. They got dinner together frequently, Mike, Bill, and Eddie. The leftovers. The times when Ben (frequently) or Stan (rarer) or Beverly (very rarely) came to town they’d join in. 

“I can’t have a dating life right now,” Eddie said.

“Sure you can,” Bill said.

“No, I can’t. I spend half my time running my mom back and forth to the hospital.”

Eddie had dated two women in the last three years, only for a few months, never long enough for a real bond to develop. He had never broken up with one of them; they had just stopped calling each other or making plans until it was obvious neither of them was going to make the effort. That had been over a year and a half ago.

“You don’t have to make it serious,” Mike said. “But you deserve to have some fun.”

Eddie snorted and picked at his food, trying to imagine bringing neat, professional Clara home to his mother’s archaic home, its old fashioned decor, his poky childhood bedroom with all the things she wouldn’t let him throw away. He had convinced her to let him paint over the wallpaper and she had fussed endlessly about ladders and fumes as he spent a weekend painting the entire room a sensible pale blue. He’d felt good when it was finished, though, lying on his bed with his arms crossed and thinking about how the colour made the room seem bigger, let in more light. Looked like his own. 

“I don’t have the time,” he said. He didn’t have much time to himself anymore. He worked eight hours a day, worked out at least an hour a day, and took his mother to the hospital. His life was routine.

“Make the time. Make the effort for yourself,” Bill said. Bill was engaged to a woman called Sue. She was sarcastic and acerbic and the two of them made each other laugh. Third-wheeling them made Eddie feel like he was trapped fifty feet underground.

At the hospital Eddie held Sonia’s hand as she had her chemotherapy treatments. They sat in a quiet room as the bag attached to her dripped medicine through her veins. Eddie stared at the wall and let his mind go blank. A woman there with her husband told him he didn’t have to stay the whole time and he left. Sonia smiled dotingly at Eddie. 

There was a nurse there who Eddie saw frequently in the cancer ward. His name was Dominic, and he was tall and graceful. Sonia disliked him, but Eddie thought there was something charming about the way he would weave through the corridors, humming lightly under his breath. He had long, delicate fingers and was always careful as he checked patients. Eddie was getting a coffee from the vending machine, taking a moment away from his mother to just breathe, when he saw Dominic waiting by the reception desk. He noticed Eddie and flashed him a smile, wide and toothy. His smile always took up the whole of his face, reaching his eyes and making his dark eyes sparkle. 

“How are you doing?” Dominic said.

“Not too bad,” Eddie said. 

“Glad to hear it.,” Dominic said. “You’re always very patient with her.” 

“Well. She’s my mom.”

Dominic reached out and touched Eddie’s wrist, just for a moment. He was a couple of inches taller than Eddie, had a comfortable heft to his body that made Eddie feel like you could sink gently into his arms and feel secure in them. Eddie licked his lower lip.

“It’s still not easy,” Dominic said, “being there for someone. You shouldn’t be taken for granted.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say to that. He swallowed dryly as the vending machine rumbled and spat out his cheap coffee. He made his excuses and went back to the room where his mother was waiting for him, the feeling of Dominic’s hand on his arm still bright and warm. 

At the food store the next day Clara was sweeping up broken glass when Eddie walked inside.

“What happened there?” He said.

“The mirror fell off the wall and broke,” she said, with a sigh. “It was such a nice frame too. The string holding it up snapped.” 

“Anything I can do to help?” He offered. She smiled at him.

“You’re sweet,” she said. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I always look forward to you coming in.”

His heart pulsed in his chest and he smiled back.

### 2004- July

The morning after his mother died Eddie stood in the parking lot of the hospital and breathed in the dry air. It was stiflingly hot; Sonia had been crying for them to bring in more fans the night before, saying it was too hot for her to sleep. She had died before Eddie came back the next morning. He had walked into the hospital at 9am and been told she’d died an hour before, they were so sorry, they were about to call him but they knew he came in at this time every day. He had nodded dumbly and then turned around to walk right back out of the building.

The night before he had held her hand and wiped sweat from her brow as she cried. She had deteriorated incredibly fast towards the end; the initial year of strength and recovery she’d shown on chemotherapy had vanished and the decline had been dizzyingly fast. They had told her that she probably only had a few months left two weeks ago. Eddie had been in the room when they’d broken the news, but he hadn’t been paying attention. He’d been staring out of the window at a bird that was hopping around on a branch, ruffling its feathers in the breeze.

“What?” He’d said, blinking at the doctor.

“I know this is very hard to hear,” she’d said.

He had held Sonia’s hand as she cried on his shoulder and promised he’d always be there, but he hadn’t been there when she died. He’d broken his promise, in the end. The only one that mattered.

It was so hot that day that he had to unbutton his shirt, pulling the collar away from his neck. He almost never wore T-shirts; Sonia said they were for children, Clara said she liked that he dressed well. He dressed for the two of them, because it felt like the right thing to do. They were the ones that had to look at him, after all. 

Eddie had seen his father when Frank was dying, but that was so long ago he no longer remembered much of him at all. He recalled snapshots, things that formed the architecture of his dreams, but had no solid memories to cling to. He’d only been five. All he knew was a clammy hand on his, the distant whining of machines in the hospital. Having to stand still as his grandmother did his tie for the funeral, his mother crying too hard to do it herself. When he had nightmares about hospitals, it was always the room his father had died in, or at least as Eddie recalled it. Those visions had started to be replaced by his mother’s room instead, one he had become intimately familiar with. Every corner of that room was burned into his mind; the pattern on the tile, the places where the paint was cracked, the dark shadow of a stain under the windowsill.

Standing was hard, so Eddie sat down on the curb at the edge of the building. He stared out across the parking lot as some people milled past towards their cars, paying no attention to him. Sweat was trickling down his spine. He’d broken his promise. He hadn’t been holding her hand when she died. Her last dying wish had been for her son to be there and he hadn’t.

Eddie called Bev.

“Hello?” She said, her voice the soft whisper of hair on her cheek as you leaned in for the hug.

“My mom is dead,” he said.

“Oh, Eddie.”

“She died this morning before I got here. She was alone. I promised I’d be there for her, but I wasn’t.”

“Eddie… You had no way of knowing. There was nothing you could have done.” She was comforting, and he could imagine her arms around him, the strength of her shoulders, the feel of her cheek on his. 

“No,” Eddie said. “I’m not sorry.”

Bev’s breath hitched.

“Good,” she said. “You shouldn’t be.”

“Can I call you again later?” He said. “I just had to tell someone. It doesn’t… I didn’t think it would feel real until someone else knew.”

“Of course you can. Is anyone else there?”

“No. It’s just me.”

The words lingered in his mouth. 

“Are you sure you want to be on your own?” Bev said. “I could stay on the line until someone else…”

“No. I need a minute. I’ll call you later.”

“Please do, sweetie. I love you.”

“I love you too, Bev.”

He hung up and listened to the call of a bird in the tree nearby. Cars on the road rumbled by. It was not quiet, but he was alone. He stared at his shoes and thought about the fact that his mother would never leave the hospital again. She had walked in and died alone, and that loneliness was the final gift she had left for him. He was alone now, the last Kaspbrak, the only one of his kind. He had no family, and no one who depended on him.

Eddie Kaspbrak, all alone. 

“You’re safe now,” he said, to no one in particular. 

His entire body tensed at the words, heart starting to race in his chest. There was a pebble on the ground next to his hand and he picked it up, turning it over before he flicked it away, watching it bounce over the tarmac. He tried to take account of the things around him (car, car, car) but his mind kept slipping back to that thought again. _ You’re safe now. _

The words scared the shit out of him.

Goldfish grew exponentially. Unlike mammals, they had the capacity to grow for the rest of their lives. Left in a big enough tank, they could grow massive. Small tanks restricted their growth. If you were to pluck out a goldfish that had lived its entire life in a tiny bowl and drop it into a huge tank, would it start to grow again? 

Sonia Kaspbrak had made sure Eddie’s tank was small enough that she could watch all four corners. Had carefully maintained it to her own standards and told him that it was the only way he could survive. Now he was a small fish dangling over the ocean and there was nothing holding him back. He could go anywhere. He could do anything. He was falling through space and the potential of what he could do was infinite, the vast blue of the sea stretching endlessly, no land to run into, no one to reach after him and pull him back out. He could do anything he wanted. 

Eddie stood up and brushed the dirt off the seat of his pants. He felt dizzy for a second in the heat, his skin damp with sweat. He hadn’t cried yet and wondered if he would. He had to, right? It was part of the grieving process, crying. It was a normal emotional reaction. His mother had just died and he had no family left, other than cousins he had not spoken to in years, his mother’s relationships with her sisters having rotted away over the years as her health and tolerance for people got worse. His only family now were his friends, who he knew instinctively would support him unconditionally. There was no reason for him to do anything he didn’t want. 

He did his shirt buttons back up and walked back inside the hospital. Dominic was waiting at the side, one hand awkwardly stroking at his wrist.

“Eddie,” he said. “I just heard. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” Eddie said, lamely. 

Dominic reached out and hugged him, which took Eddie by surprise. He smelled mostly of soap, clean and stark, but there was something else there too, a human scent, something earthier. Eddie let his arms fold around him.

“You’re going to be ok,” Dominic said.

“I know,” Eddie said. There had never been any question of that, really. He would be fine. Whether or not he’d be _ alright _ had never been the issue. He knew that he would be fine, forever. 

“Do you have any other family? Your father…?”

“Uh, no. It was just me and her. Just me now, I guess.”

Dominic’s gentle, expressive face crumpled. 

“If you need anything,” he said, “you could call me.”

Where was this affection coming from? This tenderness for another person? He gave Eddie his phone number and Eddie took it home with him, to the small empty house. He could do whatever he wanted with the house now. He was going to inherit it. He imagined tearing the entire thing down, burning it to ashes, salting the earth. He could do that, if he wanted to. He could pack up all his stuff now and leave town. He didn’t even have to have a funeral if he didn’t want to. He could just leave. There was nothing stopping him. 

Dominic’s number was written on a slip of paper. He placed it by the phone, like he was going to read off it as he dialled. The silence of the house bled into his ears. What did he want to do with the Kaspbrak house? Raise another generation of Kaspbraks under this roof? Have a little boy or girl wake up every day in his old bedroom, eat in the same kitchen that was stocked high with the pill bottles his mother had fetched for him, play in the yard he had so rarely been allowed to run free in? He didn’t want a child in this house. You shouldn’t raise a child in a mausoleum. He had grown up with death being impressed on him at every turn; he had lived in the marble walls his mother had formed for him out of his father’s death, but it was her death now that said _ you can leave. You can be anywhere, Eddie. _

Eddie was about to lift the phone up out of the cradle when Clara called him first. He tensed when he realised who it was, but then he surrendered to fate. There was relief in that. 

### 2005 - April

Bill and Sue got married in the small, old stone church outside of Derry that barely fit the congregation. Georgie was Bill’s best man, now a fresh-faced college senior who looked slightly embarrassed by his neatly fitted suit, being the kind of young man who spent his day to day life in board shorts. 

“Having a brother is fucking convenient, becuase it means I don’t have to choose between the five of you to decide who’s my best man,” Bill had said to the Losers, a little while before the wedding.

He was the second of the group to get married. Stan and Patty had tied the knot two years ago and were working on the kids already, undecided on if they were going to have two or three dozen but determined to have far more than Eddie thought was reasonable. Mike’s most recent relationship had just exploded apocalyptically a month prior, a five-year courtship ending in a massive, sudden crash as the two of them realised they wanted different things. He was still sore over it, and presumably would be for some time. Bev was single, still caught in the cycle of drifting in and out of serious relationships. Ben had been dating a woman for six months. The only other one on the verge of getting married was Eddie.

“You’re going to have a rough time picking,” Stan said to Eddie. “We’re all going to take it very personally.”

He had proposed to Clara a month ago. It had been in the middle of Mike’s relationship disaster, which had made all of them slightly reluctant to talk about it initially. One night in Mike’s apartment, over the bookstore he had just opened and was now expected to manage by himself, several bottles of wine deep, he had looked at Eddie and said:

“It’s not enough to just have someone, is it?” 

“What do you mean?” Eddie had said, also drunk. Bill was asleep face-down on Mike’s couch behind his head. 

“We’re all… Alone,” Mike said. “And we all want to fill up the loneliness, but you can’t… You can’t just grab anything you see and force it. Then you’re just alone with people.”

“That’s better than being alone,” Eddie said.

“Is it?” 

Clara came with Eddie to the wedding, even though she and Sue hated each other. They’d had a million uncomfortable outings as a group, thousands of BBQs at Bill’s place where the air had gotten tense and frosty. Sue couldn’t resist making sniping, sarcastic comments. Clara couldn’t walk away without getting the last word. 

Clara rested her head on Eddie’s shoulder as they watched the ceremony, Bill reciting his vows through a strained voice, his stutter coming back from the emotion of it all. He had never been a gifted public speaker, but it didn’t matter. It was the honesty of the words that counted. Sue smiled and tried not to let the tears in her eyes show. 

“I can’t wait until that’s us,” Clara said.

_ Why?, _Eddie thought. 

He had asked her to marry him because she said she wanted to know if their relationship had a future or not and the bleakness of being alone at 28, in his archaic house, in his hometown, was too much to bear. He thought about Mike, drunk and lying on the floor, and he thought about Richie’s voice on the phone. Bitterly, he thought that Richie didn’t even know that his mother was dead. 

More bitterly, he was sure that Richie would have known exactly what to say.

_ Good. _

At the afterparty, Bill and Sue danced to This Must Be the Place and Eddie danced with Bev, the way they used to when they were kids. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders as they swayed side to side, mostly offbeat, not that graceful. He pressed his cheek to the top of her head. 

“I’m glad we’re all here,” he said, looking at Ben a few feet away. He didn’t see Ben, Bev, or Stan as much as he would like. Bev was looking at Ben but when he looked at her she looked away again, some brief sadness flashing over her face. He hadn’t brought his new girlfriend; Eddie wondered if that was for any number of reasons or because Bev was going to be there. 

“I invited Richie,” Bev said. Beverly had seen Richie the most recently, almost five years ago, though Stan had exchanged a few phone calls with him since. Eddie had not spoken to him since the last email he’d sent ten years ago. 

“Why would you do that?” He said. He thought, absurdly, that if Richie was coming he might not have invited Clara. He couldn’t imagine the two of them talking. 

“I thought he might want to come.”

“He was never going to come, Bev. He’s moved on.”

Beverly looked at him through her long lashes. 

“Are you angry at him?” She said. 

He wondered if he was. _ Anger _felt like the wrong word for it. He had people he was angry with; the barista who kept messing up his order, Tyler at work who was wholly incompetent, himself. Those feelings, the hot flash of rage that made his body tense, that was not how he felt about Richie. When he thought about Richie he felt as though he had woken up and found the space next to him in the bed had grown cold. In the acceptance of that, something uncoiled in his chest. He hadn’t realised that it had been there, but as soon as he did it loosened.

"No," Eddie said. “No, I just miss him.”

### 2008 - October

“We’re not going to be able to afford a bigger house anywhere else,” Clara said. She was filling a trick-or-treating bowl with apples. Eddie looked at them despondently. She was right in that they were better for kids, but he felt that, on some level, kids should be able to do things that were bad for them sometimes.

“No, but if we lived in New York I’d be able to get a job that paid better,” Eddie said. “In the long-term we’d be able to upgrade.”

“You have no idea if you’d be able to get a better paying job,” Clara said. “Not that I don’t believe in you, but you don’t know that. You owned a fully paid off house by the time you were twenty-eight. That’s a huge blessing. The smart thing to do would be to start investing in property to rent out, not moving to another state where we don’t know anyone and living in a crappy apartment forever and be paying off a mortgage when we’re retiring.”

Eddie sat at the kitchen table and twisted at the stalk of an apple until it came off in his hand. His wedding ring, new and shiny, glinted at him.

“You want to live in this house for the rest of your life?” He said. He imagined waking up in the bedroom here when he was seventy, looking out at the same tree he’d looked out at every day that he could remember, under the same roof. 

“By the time we finish refurbishing it, it’s going to be like an entirely new house,” Clara said. She turned and looked at him. “Those apples are for the kids.”

He took a bite out of it. 

“You’re so childish sometimes,” she said. “Eddie, I just don’t want to live in some soulless mega-city where you never know your neighbours and you could drop dead in the street without anyone caring. If you fall in New York they just step right over you. I want to live in a town where I know people.”

Eddie thought about the history written into every street of Derry, how he knew this town like he knew himself, familiar not only with the outsides but also with the dark, hidden things that people would overlook and he would deny for the sake of his well being. Henry Bowers was a cop. He remembered once that Richie had broken Bowers’ windshield to rescue him. He smiled bitterly.

“You understand, right?” Clara said, a little aggrieved that he clearly wasn’t listening to her. “My entire family is here. I can’t just… Leave that behind.”

She reached out to run a hand through his hair. He did understand. It wasn’t easy to drop your entire history and pretend that it meant nothing, to start over somewhere new. It was possibly one of the hardest things you could do. He reasoned with himself that it wasn’t like he was living like he was a child anymore. He had his own life now. 

“Have you been taking your vitamins?” 

### 2010 - September

The therapist was called Harrison. Eddie was uncomfortable with calling him by his first name; it was too intimate. 

“Therapy is very intimate,” Harrison said.

“Not for you, though,” Eddie said. “You’re meant to be impartial. You’re meant to tell me if I’m crazy or not.”

“Do you think you’re crazy?”

“No.”

“But you would like someone else’s confirmation?”

Eddie hated talking about his emotions, especially to a strange man. Part of him felt like you shouldn’t be this emotional with another man, and then he thought that was probably sexist to every gender. 

“Do you think antidepressants could help you?” Harrison said.

“Yes,” Eddie said. “But it’s very hard for me to… Trust things I’m prescribed. My mother…”

“You blame her a lot for your issues now. We all have a point where we have to leave our parents behind, don’t we?”

“Yeah. Of course. I would like to.”

“We’ll work on that. You’re an adult, now. You’re responsible for your own actions.”

Harrison told Eddie to call him by his first name, but the warmth ended there. Stan had expressed concern that any therapist that came approved by Clara would be less interested in mental health and more interested in cults, which had annoyed Eddie, though he hadn’t really been able to tell Stan that he was going to be able to trust Dr Harrison Rolls either. He had assumed he would get over the nerves, but sitting on the stiff-backed couch in the office, he didn’t know if that was true.

Clara just told him that therapy would take time. Eddie reasoned this was probably true. They were flicking through TV channels the night before his next, fourth session. They had started watching _ Justified _, but something about the premise annoyed Eddie and he had decided that he didn’t want to watch more of it, much to Clara’s irritation. They had not found something else they could both agree on. Clara stopped on a sitcom that was playing.

“I just want someone I can talk to,” Eddie said, though that was a lie. He wanted someone to lay out for him, in clear detail, what was wrong and how he could fix it. He wanted to know why his life wasn’t making him happy, and how to convince himself that it was. 

“I don’t see why you can’t talk to me,” Clara said.

“I do talk to you,” Eddie said. “But it’s different.”

The woman on TV was explaining to the main character she couldn’t date him because her brother hated him. The main character protested he could make it up to her brother. She said he was notoriously stubborn. The door to her apartment opened and Richie walked in. Eddie jerked in his seat so hard Clara’s wine spilled a little.

“Oh, Eddie!” She said, furious. 

On the screen, Richie was playing a douchebag biker. His hair was longer and shaggier and he was wearing a sleeveless leather vest. He pushed the main character and the guy stumbled backwards. Richie laughed. Eddie had not seen Richie in anything much for a decade. He didn’t watch Richie’s work. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I just… I went to school with that guy.”

“Who?” Clara said. She glanced at the screen, but it had cut to a different scene and Richie was no longer there.

“No, he was… He was there a second ago.” Eddie watched with an almost feverish dedication to see if Richie would return, but the scene dragged on without him. "His name was Richie Tozier. He was my best friend."

Clara was scrubbing at the white wine stain on the sofa. 

"You know when we were kids, after high school, we had this agreement that we'd run away together. To California," he said. The words were pouring out of him messily, falling over each other in their haste. "He wanted to be a comedian and I wanted… To…" 

"That's crazy," Clara said. She walked out of the room with the empty wine glass. "God knows what would have happened if you'd left."

He had wondered, on occasion, what would have happened. His fantasies weren't generally very positive; he didn't think highly of his own ability to survive. After a week of being broke he would have come running back home to his mommy, Richie or no Richie. 

### 2014 - February

"I think I'm attracted to men," Eddie said. 

Dr Mitchell tapped his pen on his clipboard and made a humming noise under his breath as he considered what Eddie had said. 

"No, I don't see that for you," he said.

"Oh," Eddie said.

"A lot of men with poor relationships with their fathers seek male attention and approval elsewhere," Dr Mitchell said. 

Eddie thought about Richie. He thought about the nurse who had helped with his mother, no longer able to remember the man's name. Dennis? Donald? "I don't know if that sounds right."

Dr Mitchell sighed, irritated. "If you're not going to listen to me, therapy isn't going to be very productive." 

"I listen to you."

"Have you been taking your medication?" 

"My wife is worried about the chemicals in them." 

"Everything is made of chemicals," Dr Mitchell said. "Some of them will help you get that sleep you're missing out on."

### 2016 - May

The pain was the thing he was most aware of. Eddie's entire skull was ringing, presumably from his head snapping back and forth too hard on his spine when the seat belt had caught him. He was still holding onto the wheel, knuckles white against his skin, hands shaking violently. The edge of the seat belt had cut into his neck and a small amount of blood was splattered on his shirt. 

He didn't know what was going on. He was sitting in the car, but the car was stopped. He was looking out over the river that cut through Derry, the turbulent waters swollen from the spring rain and the last of the melted winter snow. It cut through the land beneath him, black in the darkness. A few seconds ago he had been driving home. Now he was… His head pounded. _ Whiplash _ rose up in his mind. _ Concussion. _Any number of horrific injuries you could get from a car accident.

Car accident?

He blinked and looked at the front of the car. It was wedged deep into the wood sides of the Kissing Bridge, splintered and fractured but still holding his car up and stopping it from falling head-first into the choppy waters. If it rolled forward maybe a foot it would be in danger of teetering over the edge and tumbling into the river, taking him with it.

"Oh, God," he said. 

He rolled down the window of the car door and looked out. Solid ground. Very slowly he undid his seat belt and eased open the door. He could probably get out now. The car was wedged into the barrier, but it wasn’t in any danger of rolling over. He’d probably have to sit with his foot on the gas for a long time before he managed to force his way through. Just sit with his foot like a deadweight on the accelerator and wait for gravity to take control and take him down with it. 

His legs were shaking so violently that he thought maybe the issue wouldn't be that the bridge wouldn't hold him, but that he wouldn't be able to hold up himself. He slid one leg out, tested the floor, slid out another. 

He made it two steps before he slipped and hit the ground on his ass. His joints hurt, his spine felt like something had hit him in the centre of his back and pain was shooting up and down it. He let himself sit on the wood and dirt floor of the bridge. He must have fallen asleep at the wheel. All the care he tried to take over his life and he'd passed out at the fucking wheel and nearly gotten himself killed. Eddie took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to think of what to do next, but it was hard to think of anything; he could only stare at his car in horrified, stunned silence, at the torn, wounded metal front and the scratched paint, at the place where the wood had managed to pierce the grill. _ Try to think of what's in your surroundings Eddie -- _ how was that going to help him now? His surroundings were the problem at that moment. _ One wrecked car, one broken bridge, one fractured fence, one river running fast and deadly through the night _.

What if he had never gotten out.

It hit him at full force then that he was going to have to handle this, somehow. He was going to have to 'fix' it, whatever that meant. Call the cops, the insurance people, the mechanics. Maybe an ambulance; he didn't know if he had a concussion or not. He was lucky he hadn't died.

Well, that depended on how you looked at luck.

The amount that he was going to have to _ fix _ now was instantly overwhelming. The force of what was being asked of him hit him very suddenly, washing over him as if he had fallen into the river after all, waves of realisation sweeping over his head and pulling him under. There was no one he could rely on to fix this for him; it was all on Eddie Kaspbrak to get this handled, and the scope of how much there was to do brought him, humiliatingly, to tears. He gulped loudly, trying to swallow back his sadness, but his body was shaking and he couldn't hold back on the force of the panic that was taking hold of him. He could feel tears starting to roll down his cheeks, fat and wet and shameful.

A part of him, a part that he wanted to rail against, to scream at and beat back, begged for his mommy. Just to feel some arms around him and to tell him that things were going to be alright. She was, of course, dead, and she had never been one for fixing things in the first place. But despite all that he wanted, so badly, to not be responsible for this. He didn't want to have to be the one who made the decisions. He didn't want to have to decide if the car was worth fixing or a wreck, knowing either way he was letting Clara down because he shouldn't have wrecked the car in the first place.

(Though really he thought it didn't make much a difference now anyway; divorce was less a matter of _ if _ but _ when _).

He hadn't been sleeping. He probably shouldn't have been driving. He knew this, logically, but the idea of giving in and saying _ yeah, I'll take the day off work because I spent all of last night sitting in front of the TV watching terrible game shows, praying for my brain to stop spinning in my skull like a broken machine on a loop for just one second, just long enough for me to sleep _ . It sounded pathetic, though really at this point Eddie didn't know why he was pretending there was anything about him that _ wasn't _ pathetic. He had one strike left at work before he might end up losing the job he hated, his marriage was coming to a rocky, horrible end, he had crashed his car and it wasn't even on purpose. He hadn't even died.

There was a high, piercing sound in the air and it wasn't until it cut off in a loud wail that Eddie realised it was a police siren. He twisted his head around and looked at the Derry PD car sitting at the edge of the bridge. The driver's side door opened and someone climbed out. In the bright headlights they were a short, solid silhouette for a few moments. A part of Eddie, a childish part that still wanted to believe in heroes, felt hopeful that they might help him.

"What the fuck happened... Kaspbrak?" Henry Bowers' voice cut through the night air like a knife through the dark. When he drew closer, Eddie could see his teeth shining in his smile. "What the hell did you do?"

He didn't look like he was actually interested in an answer. He bent over so he was almost face to face with Eddie, his hands on his knees, his pose the patronising stature of someone talking to a young child.

"Did you fuck it all up?" He said, his voice high with mirth, eyes glimmering in the distant light. "You're meant to go over the bridge with the car, Kaspbrak." 

"Yeah," Eddie said, his voice a rasp. His body felt so tired, every joint aching like he'd run a mile. He could barely lift his head to keep eye contact with Bowers, not that he really wanted to. "I guess I did."

### 2016 - June

"It's going to be twenty years, that's worth celebrating," Bill said.

Eddie stared at him, sliding the book he'd been looking at back onto the shelf. Mike had technically closed up an hour ago, but he was happy to let the two of them wander around his bookstore more while he sat at the counter and did some quick accounts. They were going to go out for dinner again, the three of them, another little Losers Club reunion.

"What, just the idea of living for another twenty years?" Eddie said.

"Like this shit is easy?" Mike said, counting through a stack of ten dollar bills quickly, the notes rustling in the quiet store. Eddie liked Mike's store. It was always dim and quiet, slightly sleepy, all dark, rich wood and high shelves that let you hide away from people's sight. There was nowhere to sit, but it was easy to find yourself standing behind a set of shelves and reading through a book for hours, lost in the shadows and the kind of unglamorous, thoughtful science fiction that Eddie favoured.

"It's my school and I can make the rules," Bill said.

"It's not _ your school _," Eddie said.

"They told me I can arrange the reunion party, so it is technically school for the summer. Come on, class of '94! Whoo!" Bill punched the air and accidentally knocked his hand against a book someone had left hanging off the edge of a shelf, sending it tumbling to the floor. He scrambled to pick it up.

"If you wreck my store I'm not selling your books anymore, Denbrough," Mike called. This was a hollow threat. 

Bill pulled a _ whoops I'm in trouble _ face at Eddie, who rolled his eyes, admittedly with some amusement.

"I guess we can get everyone back together again," Eddie said. "I haven't seen Bev and Ben since Christmas. I'd like to see them before the wedding."

"God, I hope so, they're not getting married until December," Mike said. "I want to see my friends more than once a year."

"Why are they getting married in the middle of winter?" Bill said.

"Ben loves Christmas," Mike said, with a shrug. "And they can probably afford to go on a honeymoon to the Caribbean or something."

Bill walked over to go and lean on the counter where Mike was cashing up, shoulder to shoulder with the stand on the edge that said LOCAL AUTHOR and carried his books, surrounded by a prominent shiny border. It never failed to catch the eye of whoever walked into the store; Eddie thought Mike had single-handedly sold more copies of Bill's books than any other bookseller in the country. Bill's agent should have been cutting him checks.

"You sound jealous," Bill said, leaning his chin on his hand. He looked almost coquettish as he smiled at Mike, who cocked an eyebrow.

"I've already been to the Caribbean," he said primly. He had been halfway around the world and back a half dozen times by that point, though tying himself down to the bookstore had slowed down his ability to travel pretty dramatically. He didn't have anyone he trusted enough to keep it running in his absence.

He had offered the responsibility of handling it to Eddie the month prior, as Eddie decompressed with some time off work following driving his car into the side of a fucking bridge and nearly getting himself killed. The car had been totaled. He had not been able to bring himself to decide on a new one.

"What do you mean?" Eddie had said. "I have a job."

Mike had pulled a face at him. "You hate that job. You could run the bookstore for a few months while I'm away. It could be a change of pace for you."

Eddie had laughed the idea off as absurd. It just wasn't... It just wasn't his lifeplan. Mike had graciously accepted the rejection, but the idea had stuck in the back of Eddie's mind. Right then, he imagined sitting at the counter and cashing up at the end of the day, talking to customers, spending most of his days reading and watching the traffic go by. He could probably even stay in Mike's apartment upstairs so he wouldn't have to commute from Derry everyday. He wouldn't have to go back to that house... He swallowed.

Clara had moved out and then moved back in again. She had packed up after Eddie had crashed the car, gone to stay with her friend. Eddie had not blamed her for this. He didn't blame her when she came back either, though he wasn't entirely sure why she did, turning up and talking to him about missing him and wanting to try and make sure they couldn't work everything out. He had wanted to ask what exactly she missed about him; was it the long, awkward silences at night, when they had run out of things to say about themselves and neither of them could pretend to be interested in asking the other about their day? Was it the bitter asides when one of them realised that the tether of their relationship and history was preventing them from doing something else, or had already stopped them from doing something with their life? He wanted to say to her, _ what exactly did you miss about me Clara? My bad moods, my depression, the fact I'm an adult man who doesn't have hobbies and who spends as much time as he can with his friends and not with you? _

He did not say any of that. He didn't think he had room to push, and he hated the silence of the house.

_ Do you want some cheese with all that whine, Kaspbrak? _

"Who else are you going to invite to a reunion?" Eddie said.

Bill made a small noise as he tried to catch up with what Eddie had said, distracted by the passive-aggressive staring contest he'd gotten into with Mike, or whatever it was the two of them were up to in the corner.

"Oh, you know," he said vaguely. "We set up a Facebook group, invite everyone we can think of, word gets around."

He looked at Eddie, long and steady. Mike's eyes, too, were knowing in a way that Eddie wished they weren't.

"We could invite Richie," Mike said.

"Bev has his email," Bill said.

"Richie's not going to come," Eddie said. "He didn't come to your _ wedding, _Bill. Or to Stan's. He didn't come to... My mom's funeral. He didn't come when Stan's kids were born, or yours, or Ben's son. He's not going to come to a high school reunion party."

"He will if you ask him," Mike said.

Eddie had been looking at a book, some classic horror novel that weighed a tonne and promised to scare him witless, though he found it hard to imagine being terrified of anything that was written a hundred years ago and told in the distant, stiff prose they favoured back then. He shoved it back onto the shelf with an audible _ thump. _

"He didn't last time," Eddie said.

He didn't want to hear anymore about it, and the others could tell, the two of them exchanging silent glances. Sometimes they drove him _ batshit _. He lapsed into a moody silence until they finally locked up and left, headed out to get some dinner.

Bill did not drop the idea of a reunion, though. That was happening for sure. Eddie wanted to tell him to stop, to let it go. Sure, twenty years was impressive, but why were they celebrating high school? All of them had hated being kids, had been miserable or bored or uninspired as children without control over their lives and their destinies, without the security of knowing what the future would hold for them. The mean part of him wanted to take Bill -- and the Derry High alumni Facebook group's -- plans and rip them apart like a dog shredding newspaper, shaking it violently from side to side until all was left was a pile of shreds on the floor, no story that anyone could assemble, no narrative, nothing to say but nonsense.

He told Clara about the idea of the reunion with a slight but obvious edge of spite to his voice. _ Tell me this is ridiculous _, his voice said.

"Sounds like a good idea," Clara said, without putting that much thought into it.

Eddie wished he knew why the idea made him so angry, but something about it made heat flash up in his chest like someone had let off a firecracker, the anger jumping and rattling around inside his ribs, bouncing off every part of his chest and leaving hot welts. He was mad about it. It was stupid, seeing Richie again was stupid, wanting to celebrate school was stupid, nostalgia was stupid.

He had looked up Richie several times over the years. He watched little of Richie's work, mostly just because he didn't find it interesting. It offered him no salve. He didn't like rude, shock humour, and most of the shows Richie was on were the kind of lowest-common-denominator schlock that Eddie could barely comfortably sit through five minutes of, even if his ex-boyfriend wasn't on screen, making up bullshit stories about women with huge tits who were apparently throwing themselves at him. 

Eddie wondered sometimes if Richie was really having sex with women. He knew Richie had dated a girl in school -- Ruth, who had grown up to become a cop and joked with Eddie sometimes about their famous friend, but for whom Richie's life was an entertaining novelty she had experienced and not something that had impacted her the way Richie still dominated so much of the way Eddie lived and behaved -- but he had no idea if Richie was still going out of his way to date women and hide himself amongst society. If he was doing this kind of stand-up then there was a serious chance that was the case, Eddie thought. He had to back up his words with something, right? Richie wasn't _ famous _ famous, but he was a public figure, had people who knew him and followed the dull personal drama of his life. They might notice if Richie was never seen with women or was seen often with men. They might wonder why he talked so much about sex and lived so much of his life alone. The questions made Eddie's teeth itch. He could barely even think about it, let alone bring himself to actually look it up, and couldn't imagine what it had to be like living with the public bullseye on you that came from being a celebrity. Richie's horrible fear of being caught had been so fucking prominent when he was a teenager, why the hell had he voluntarily submitted himself to being in the limelight, to a life where he was almost guaranteeing he would never be able to be himself and he would never be able to live authentically as Richie Tozier, whatever _ that _ meant. 

Eddie wondered if anyone knew who Richie Tozier actually was.

He wondered if even he knew who Richie was.

Did anyone care? Did Richie have friends now, good ones, close ones, who knew his private life? For all Eddie knew Richie was living comfortably with dozens of friends and a secret boyfriend he kept out of the public eye, a trained expert in being a chameleon after years of living under the horrible scrutiny of Derry gossip, happy with no one finding out anything about him. No one had to know the real Richie Tozier, was the thing. Maybe Richie didn't want them to.

Eddie was sure he had known the real Richie. Was sure of it, just as sure as he was that Richie was the only person who had ever known the real him. He was certain, too, that he might be the only person who ever got to know Richie. In a selfish way Eddie hoped he was. It wasn't that he hoped Richie was unhappy -- he wanted Richie to be happy -- but he didn't think he could watch Richie be happy without him. If he never looked he would never have to find out. The confirmation that Richie had moved on might kill him.

He had never told anyone that he and Richie had been together. In his thoughts he flippantly referred to Richie as his 'ex-boyfriend'; at first he had skirted away from the word before he had shifted to using it unironically, and the meaning of it had started to sink in. After all, what separated the relationship that Richie and Eddie had had from the one that Richie and Ruth had had? Eddie was fucking _ sure _ he and Richie had been the closer pair. He would put money on it. He would put his entire life savings on it. He would sell his house for it. He would give up his whole life for it.

What a life it was, too.

He had told Clara a long time ago, in a sideways, curious, slightly dishonest way that he had had experiences with men. He had stressed it was as a teenager, found himself framing it as some kind of crazy experimental phase he'd had. 

"Was it with Bill?" She'd asked. "I always thought Bill might be a little... You know. Open-minded."

This was news to Eddie, who had been so thrown by this assertion he'd gotten distracted trying to pry out of Clara what exactly this entailed and what factors Bill in particular had that marked him out and apparently didn't mark out Eddie himself. He hadn't gotten any kind of clear answer, because this kind of assumption making wasn't an exact science. She had assumed also that what Eddie had been talking about was a normal kind of teenage messing around, boys being boys, something he had grown out of. Flippantly, she had said:

"I think we all experiment a little when we're young, don't we?" And then added, "I don't think you're gay, if that's what you're worried about."

She had taken his questioning to be a sign that he was disturbed by the idea Bill might not be straight. Eddie was both revolted by the idea he could be seen as homophobic but also, in another part of himself, deeply sad that maybe he had grown out of a teenage phase.

Teenagers were wild, passionate, filled with emotions they couldn't handle. They did crazy, risky things. They lived life on the edge and didn't worry so much about every part of their future, or did worry about their future and did crazy, impulsive things to shape it. Teenagers got to live free. Eddie had been born into a hospital room, one monitored by a nervous, fretful, over-anxious nurse, and he had stayed there. He had stayed there for so long that when they left the door open he had rushed to close it again, scared of what might get in.

If you took a fish that had been raised in a closed environment, would the shock of the wild kill them stone dead? Could that fish ever understand that the confines of its tank didn't exist anymore, except for in its mind?

Eddie didn't know.

He mourned the fact that he didn't know who Richie was now, but he knew that part of the reason he was so sad he didn't know Richie was because it meant that there was no longer anyone in the world who truly knew every part of him, including, of course, himself. There was no one who cared enough to ask. His friends knew him and they loved what they knew of him, but he was never going to be with them the way he had been with Richie; the dynamics weren't the same. He was never going to say_ so Mike, am I gay? _

Mike and Bill both thought that Richie would come home if Eddie asked him to. Most of the others had seen Richie at some point, more recently than Eddie ever had. Eddie had never reached out. It was stupid to try, wasn't it? Stupid, futile, humiliating.

"He doesn't care about us," Eddie said, another night, when the reunion was drawing closer and closer and the window of time he had left to reasonably ask Richie was shrinking. If he waited long enough then he knew whatever answer he got would almost definitely be 'I can't come, I have a full schedule, I wouldn't be able to get a plane ticket in time', and maybe that was the reason he kept putting it off. Because he could take the certain no that also wasn't a way of confirming all his worst fears. He could go back then to the vagueness of living in a world where he didn't really have any answers, where no one did, where Richie was less a person and more of an emblem of the shit that Eddie Kaspbrak had done wrong in his life.

"_ You _ care," Bill said, with a surprising amount of force. "That's enough."

"Don't tell me to shut up," Eddie said.

"No. I didn't mean 'that's enough, be quiet'," Bill said. "I mean 'that's all the reason you need'."

Eddie didn't have a good response to that. His gut instinct had been to say that it simply wasn't true. You didn't get to do things just because you wanted to. That wasn't how life worked. You just dealt with what you were given.

"Don't you miss him?" Mike said.

"Yeah, but... Who cares?" Eddie said. “It’s been _ twenty years.” _

"We do," Mike said.

"You can't just decide you know how everything is going to go and use that as your excuse to not do anything. You can't tell the future," Bill said, with a finality that made it clear he wasn't going to be moved from what he was saying. The only answer he would accept was that it was worth trying.

It was a night so hot that Eddie had kicked the sheets off, lying on the mattress sweltering in a white tank top that Clara hated but that Eddie privately liked, able to see the strength in his arms when he flexed or moved and think about how far he had come from being a skinny little kid, how much he had taken care of his body. The heat was making it impossible to sleep and he had slipped out of bed eventually, leaving Clara asleep. He had enough difficulty sleeping at the best of times that he had become adjusted to just giving up some nights and taking the rest of the day in a miserable, foggy-headed cloud of exhaustion. He had gone into the bathroom and quickly found himself sitting on the cold porcelain edge of the tub. It was pretty effectively cooling and it was no time at all that he had climbed into the dry bath and was lying down, the white walls taking the edge off the heat. If he wanted to really cool down he could turn the shower head on cold and soak himself, he thought, with some slight malice, the way someone might look over the edge of a flight of stairs and think about how easy it would be to spit on the head of someone passing below, or to throw your phone casually off the side of a bridge and into a river.

Obviously he did not do any of those things. Eddie Kaspbrak did not do rash things. He stayed at home and followed his routines and watched as his life slipped away from him, night by night. The fact he frequently stayed up all night now only made him more aware of how much time was getting away from him. He had a full 24 hours a day and he didn't do a damn thing with any of it.

His phone dinged in his pyjama pants pocket and he pulled it out to look at who was emailing him at gone one o'clock in the morning. Obviously it ended up being a spam email, but once he had his phone out he kept flicking through it, looking for something to keep him at least moderately entertained, or bore him enough to put him to sleep.

_ What time is it in LA _.

_ 10:15 PM _.

Richie would probably still be awake. If Eddie sent him an email he might be awake enough to actually read it as soon as it arrived. The idea was kind of horrifying. What if he responded right away? An all caps NO arriving in Eddie's inbox the minute he sent some pleading little note to Richie? Jesus.

Instead he went to Richie's twitter. He didn't know why. Some kind of longing to see what Richie was doing, he supposed. Maybe he was also sitting in a bathtub, sweltering in the summer heat, looking for an escape.

The last tweet on Richie's twitter was from six hours ago and was about the new season of the show he was on. Eddie had never watched it. He knew that it had been nominated for a writing Emmy at some point, but hadn't won. The tweet and the show both provided no information about Richie's life.

_ Who is Richie Tozier dating? _

According to a website that collected this kind of information about people, for reasons Eddie couldn't even begin to imagine, Richie Tozier had most recently been dating another stand-up comedian, but it was thought they'd broken up nine months ago. There was a photo of the two of them at some kind of event, Richie's arm around her. She was smiling at the camera.

"Fuck," Eddie said out loud.

He thought that maybe, possibly, _ he _had been having some kind of teenage phase that didn't indicate anything real, that he had grown out of his interest in boys and was only obsessed now because it was a symbol of his free-wheeling youth, his potential to be living a radically different life. He thought that was a distinct possibility.

That was not possible for Richie. Richie was gay. Richie had known he was gay, had told Eddie he was gay, had been as certain of it as Eddie was that the sky was fucking blue. It was not something that would have _ gone away. _ If he was thirty-seven, nearly thirty-eight, and dating women, dating women _ recently _, then it meant a couple of things could be happening, but none of them were good. None of them said 'Richie Tozier is happy and free, and he doesn't need or want you'.

Richie Tozier was unhappy. The weight of it hit all at once, his body jerking in the driver's seat as his car hit a wall. It shouldn't have been so heavy when it was, in hindsight, fucking obvious that it had always been a possibility. But lying in the bathtub in the middle of the night, Eddie realised that Richie wasn't happy. Neither of them were happy.

With slightly trembling fingers he searched YouTube for clips of Richie being interviewed. There was one from a few months ago, of Richie on a talk show promoting his TV show. He had longish hair, past his chin, and the same huge dark-framed glasses he had favoured since childhood. He was wearing a leather jacket and a T-shirt and when he smiled, laughing with the host, something in Eddie's chest went _ click _.

In the interview, Richie tossed his head back when he laughed, joked with the audience. There was an ease with which he performed that made sense. He was a professional, after all, a trained one. He knew how to handle a crowd. He talked for the full seven minutes of the clip, an easy rapport with the host and the audience. For that entire time, he didn't say a single thing about himself.

The first season of Richie's show was on Hulu. Eddie looked it up and very quickly found it annoying. It had its moments, but it wasn't particularly good or inspired, most of the skits playing off the same dull stereotypes that had existed in comedy for an age and a half. Richie of a couple of years ago walked onto the set with shorter hair and did the voice of a guy who had grown up in a rich, Atlantic family, did the voice with an ease he'd never had as a child, and cracked wise about hookers, blow, not knowing the value of human life. It bored Eddie. He remembered Richie as having pretty good taste, for a teenager, when it came to media. He'd had an understanding of film that was pretty complex, and there was no way that had _ vanished. _ He hadn't _ forgotten _that. He'd just decided to stop caring about it.

Eddie turned his screen off and laid his head back against the side of the tub, staring at the white plaster ceiling. Somewhere out there, Richie was living his life. He woke up every day and went to a job that didn't mean anything, and went home to someone who he could never really, truly know or love.

Richie Tozier wasn't a symbol of Eddie's teenage rebellion. He wasn't a symbol at all. He was a person. He was Eddie's friend, and he was sad, and alone, maybe. He might be struggling, and no one noticed, except for Eddie.

At some point, he wasn't sure when, he fell asleep. He woke up to Clara yanking open the shower curtain with an aggressive rustle of the metal rings that shocked him awake. He blinked up at her and the sunlight splayed across the room in a confused haze.

"What are you _ doing? _" She said.

"I fell asleep," he said, his mouth dry and his neck throbbing painfully from the bad angle he'd fallen asleep at.

"Why are you in the bathtub? Were you sleep walking?"

"No it was hot, I thought it would be cooler."

"Can I take a shower?"

"Yeah, sorry."

He left the room, his neck cramping and aching, and looked at his phone. It was still open on twitter, and he saw that Richie had tweeted once at what would have been just past one AM in LA. He'd tweeted a photo of his TV screen and his feet up on a coffee table.

_ obscure little movie no ones ever heard of _

Eddie squinted at the screen in the photo. He thought it was Snake Plissken. It might have been _ Escape from LA. _ Or more likely the original, _ Escape from New York. _Eddie shook his head quickly, unsure why he'd jumped to that conclusion.

Bev had texted him Richie's email a few weeks ago. He'd not looked at it for a few days, like it was going to leap out of the screen and bite him, but he looked now. He tapped it, opening up his email app, and then found he had no idea what to say. Where did you even begin? What the hell could you say to someone who had once been your entire world and was now a stranger to you?

He pasted in the link to the Facebook group and sent that. He signed it _ Eds _. He thought that if they felt the same way, Richie would know what it meant.

### 2016 - August

Richie came and went in one weekend and two months later Eddie nearly killed Tony Price at work by throwing a heavy duty stapler at him and knocking Tony’s photo of his wife off the wall and breaking it. The bank Eddie worked for took a very dim view of this. The firing had been swift, so swift that Eddie barely had time to even process that it was happening before he was out of the door. The only saving grace, really, was that Tony didn’t want to press charges and wasn’t sure if he even could, but mostly just didn’t want to have to see Eddie again.

Eddie was fine, walking out of the office and down to the car with a cardboard box of his things in his hands (there were not many things to fill it, Eddie had always taken a dim view of people bringing too much of their personal lives into work, so fuck the photo of your wife Tony, I hope she divorces you) and he was fine getting into the crappy little Toyota sedan that he’d bought because it was practical even though it evoked no joy in him at all, and he was fine right up until he started the engine and realised he had to drive back to his mother’s house.

The car engine hummed but Eddie sat there with his hands on the wheel and his eyes fixed on the parking lot tarmac and thought about the quietness of his mother’s house. With Clara gone it felt even less like his home. All the attempts to renovate it had been her ideas and now the house bore no trace of his mother, but it bore no trace of him, either. He was going to have to sell it.

With that thought in mind he managed to pull out of the parking lot and get back onto the road. He was going to have to sell the house. He didn’t need a family home anyway, he didn’t have a family. They’d never needed one in the first fucking place, Clara had never wanted kids, they’d been living in a half-empty house their entire marriage. Now, with just him there, it felt even more pointless. He was going to have to sell it.

If he sold it, he would have to find somewhere else to live. He was going to have to find somewhere else to _ work, _too. Thirty-eight and starting over at a new company at a time in his life when he should be settling in, working his way up the ladder, going home to his family every night. He had lost his marriage, he had lost his job, and now he was about to give up his house, too? Then what did he have? He wouldn’t have anything. He’d have nothing at all. Every responsibility, every single thing tying Eddie down would be cut. Without any stability at all, he would be nothing more than a man free floating through space, nothing around him but the endless void. One hand reaching out across the void to… To…

Spotify had turned on when he’d gotten in the car and his phone had connected to the stereo, but he hadn’t been paying attention to it. He hadn’t been thinking about it at all until the name of the show in the commercial caught his ear. 

“Win tickets to watch live recordings of season four of _ The Loudmouth Roadshow _ by going to www dot the loudmouth roadshow dot com forward slash live,” the commercial informed him. 

That was the show Richie had left, Eddie remembered. It had been bad, Eddie hadn’t liked it. Richie hadn’t liked it either. That’s why he’d quit. He’d hated it, so he’d gone. He’d hated Derry, so he’d left. Eddie had hated his job, his house, his town, and he had stayed. He’d had good reasons to, but he’d stayed. He’d sat in it, and waited to stop caring about what exactly he was sitting in. For his entire life he had sat and waited until he could just give up, surrender to the walls that caged him in. They were gone now.

_ If you hate it then you can quit. _

The Toyota quietly growled to itself as they waited at a red light. If he turned left here, then drove, then turned left again, then right, he would end up at the Kissing Bridge. They had still not repaired it. He’d driven into it accidentally before. Fallen asleep at the wheel.

_ If you hate it then you can quit. _

He could get to the bridge without much difficulty. And then he would only have to apply a little more intent to finish the job. 

Eddie had played life with the hand he had been dealt, and maybe that was all they could ever do. All you could ever do was look at the cards you had and play with what you got. Eddie had played out his cards and now he had nothing left. The gamble didn’t pay off. It was time to cash it all in, Eddie Kaspbrak. You have come to the end of the game and now it’s time to pay up. 

_ If you hate it then you can quit. _

There was nothing left to lose. 

_ If you hate it then you can quit. _

A cop car was idling on the side of the road and he was struck with the thought that someone would have to find him, if he did drive off the bridge. It had been Henry Bowers last time, who had found him crashed into the side of the bridge, barely conscious. It could very well be Bowers again this time. Only so many cops in a small town like Derry. Even if Bowers didn’t find him in the fucking Kenduskaeg, he’d hear about it. Might have to clean up, might have to do some of the paperwork. Bowers was waiting for it. That was the hand Bowers had been dealt; one that would play out just how he liked when he got to find Eddie Kaspbrak quit the game for good.

“Oh, shit,” Eddie said, realising what he still had to lose. 

It was either good luck, bad luck, or just plain dumb luck, but there was a flight to LAX from Bangor airport and there was a seat left. More than one, actually. Slow day for flying, perhaps, the act of some benevolent god, possibly. Whatever reason it was, Eddie had booked a ticket by the time he arrived back at his house, cruising down the road with his cellphone in his hand like an advertisement for reckless driving. He didn’t have time to pack, but that was fine, he only needed to grab the one thing from his house. He had spent a second thinking about it and realised very quickly there was nothing in the house he really wanted. 

The photograph he was looking for was in the back of a drawer in his room. He’d put it there for safekeeping, maybe. He wasn’t really sure, honestly. It was an old, crumpled, slightly faded photograph of two boys leaping off of a cliff and falling down towards the water below. They were tumbling through the air with nothing to save them but the blind hope that when they landed, they would at least land together.

On the back was Richie’s phone number. He could have called it then, or he could have called it when he was driving to the airport, or he could have called it when he was sitting and waiting for the plane. But for some reason, whatever reason, he didn’t call the number until he had already landed at LAX.

It was hot. Swelteringly fucking hot, and Eddie was starting to sweat through his work suit. He regretted wearing a suit. He regretted the concept of summer. He regretted being acclimatized to Maine, where the weather was generally pretty poor and a hell of a lot cooler. He did not regret coming. 

The phone rang once before Richie answered. 

“Hey, Rich,” Eddie said.

The walls were gone. There was no tank. The sea, huge and sparkling and blue, opened itself up before him. Across the vastness of space, filled with nothing, a hand reached back.

“Hi, Eds,” Richie said.


End file.
